Overview

The Pairwise Independent
Combinatorial Testing tool (PICT) can help you efficiently design test cases and
test configurations for software systems. With PICT, you can generate tests that
are more effective than manually generated tests and create them in a fraction
of the time required by hands-on test case design. PICT generates a compact set
of parameter value choices that represent the test cases you should use to get
comprehensive combinatorial coverage of your parameters.

Using PICT to Combine Test Case
Parameters

PICT runs as a command line tool.
You prepare a model file detailing the parameters of the interface (or set of
configurations, or data) you want to test. PICT generates a compact set of
parameter value choices that represent the test cases you should use to get
comprehensive combinatorial coverage of your parameters.

For instance, if you wish to
create a test suite for partition and volume creation, the domain can be
described by the following parameters: Type, Size, File
system, Format method, Cluster size, and Compression.
Each parameter has a limited number of possible values, each of which is
determined by its nature (for example, Compression can only be On or Off) or as an equivalence partition (such
as Size).

There are over 4,700 possible
combinations of these values. It would be very difficult to test all of them in
a reasonable amount of time. Research shows that testing all
pairs of possible values provides very good coverage and the number of
test cases will remain manageable. For example, {Primary, FAT} is one
pair and {10, slow} is another; a single test
case can cover many pairs.

For the set of parameters shown
above, PICT will produce 60 test cases