Combinatorial methods can reduce costs for software testing, and have significant applications in software engineering:
ACTS - award winning tool for combinatorial testing, used in thousands of organizations worldwide
Examples and Case Studies - from some of the world's largest organizations, including Adobe, Avaya, Bosch, IBM, Jaguar Land Rover, Lockheed Martin, Mercedez Benz, US Nuclear Regulatory Commission, Red Hat, Rockwell Collins, Siemens, the US Air Force, US Army, US Marine Corps, US Navy, and others.
- Industrial examples - - Autonomous systems - - Cybersecurity -
FREELY AVAILABLE SOFTWARE More than 4,000 corporate and university users --> Version 3.2 of ACTS released Sept. 30, 2019
Most Influential Paper award at ICST 2023 (Practical category), Yu, L., Lei, Y., Kacker, R. N., & Kuhn, D. R. "ACTS: A combinatorial test generation tool" 2013 IEEE Sixth International Conference on Software Testing, Verification and Validation (ICST).
Software on this site is free of charge and will remain free in the future. It is public domain; no license is required and there are no restrictions on use. You are free to include it and redistribute it in commercial products if desired. NIST is a US Government agency, doing research in advanced measurement and test methods.
To obtain the tools, please send a request to Rick Kuhn - kuhn@nist.gov. Please provide first and last name, and organization. We will send you a download link.
QUICK START - It's easy to learn the basics of this method!
ORACLE-FREE TESTING
Combinatorial methods make it possible to detect a significant number of faults without a conventional test oracle. This seemingly impossible task is achieved using two layers of covering arrays with equivalence classes. A U.S. patent (#10552300) has been issued for this method, but this patent does not apply to ACTS or any other tools on this site; these tools are public domain. For more information on the oracle-free testing method, please contact our Technology Partnerships Office.
SOME OF OUR ACCOMPLISHMENTS TO DATE INCLUDE:
Contacts: Rick Kuhn - kuhn@nist.gov, or Raghu Kacker - raghu.kacker@nist.gov or M S Raunak - ms.raunak@nist.gov
Security and Privacy: assurance, modeling, testing & validation
Technologies: software & firmware