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Better Allpairs Test Tool

Microsoft has released a free test tool that does some pretty cool all-pairs test generation.

It’s called PICT. Unlike my tool, it has some sophisticated dependency handling.

I see only two downsides with it: a) they provide no diagnostic output, so you have to use elaborate hand checking or just hope that the output is correct. b) they don’t provide source code.

This entry was posted on Thursday, June 29th, 2006 at 4:51 pm and is filed under Software Testing and Quality. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.

5 Responses to “Better Allpairs Test Tool”

  1. Chris Meisenzahl Says:
    June 30th, 2006 at 7:43 am

    I’ve been tinkering w/ PICT for a couple months and love it so far. I prefer the diagnostic output of your PERL prorgam, but PICT’s options are great.

    Chris
    http://amateureconblog.blogspot.com

  2. Peter Zimmerer Says:
    July 4th, 2006 at 2:17 am

    I agree, yes, PICT is really a very interesting tool!
    I will talk about that topic in my 90-minute class “Combinatorial Testing Explained” at SD Best Practices Conference 2006 in Boston, MA, USA on September 13, 2006, see https://www.cmpevents.com/SDe6/a.asp?option=G&V=3&id=271406.

  3. Christopher Meisenzahl Says:
    July 23rd, 2006 at 8:38 am

    Thanks Peter, definitely interested in that.

  4. Toby Says:
    November 22nd, 2006 at 2:36 am

    On your recommendation I checked out PICT and find it a very useful tool. I like expecially the simple format of the input file. I used it to do a live demo yesterday and it worked every time I created a new file! I wonder how much I need to test the tool itself though? Has anyone reported any bugs on PICT yet?

    [James’ Reply: The great mystery of PICT is how is it tested and why should we trust it. It’s not open source and there is no forum to support it, as far as I know.]

  5. JTD Says:
    February 1st, 2007 at 8:46 am

    I must say, I find that so far PICT is very trustworthy. The combinations are representative and complete. It is also a very useful tool with the option of creating constraints (which any other tool have limitations of).
    But in my opinion PICT lacks speed, it takes forever to create a large test set with constraints and a large set of variables. It also ‘eats’ up all the resources of the CPU. But this is probably inherent to all pair wise test tools with constraints. But in all one of the best (freeware!) test tools.

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