A friend passed me this set of recent tweets from Wil Shipley, a Mac developer with 11,743 followers on Twitter as of today. Wil recently encountered the familiar problem of what to do when you've got more software tests to run than you can realistically execute.

I love that. Who can't relate?

Now if only there were a good, quick way to reduce the number of tests from over a billion to a smaller, much more manageable set of tests that were "Altoid-like" in their curious strength. :) I rarely use this blog for shameless plugs of our test case generating tool, but I can't help myself here. The opening is just too inviting. So here goes:

"Wil,

There's an app for that... See www.hexawise.com for Hexawise, a "pairwise software test case generating tool on steroids." It eats problems like the one you encountered for breakfast. Hexawise winnows bazillions of possible test cases down in the blink of an eye to small, manageable sets of test cases that are carefully constructed to maximize coverage in the smallest amount of tests, with flexibility to adjust the solutions based upon the execution time you have available. In addition to generating pairwise testing solutions, Hexawise also generates more thorough applied statistics-based "combinatorial software testing" solutions that include tests for, say, all possible 6-way combinations of test inputs.

Where your Mac cops an attitude and tells you "Bitch, I ain't even allocating 1 billion integers to hold your results" and showers you with taunting derisive sneers, head-waggling and snaps all carefully choreographed to let you know where you stand, Hexawise, in contrast, would helpfully tell you: "Only 1 billion total possibilities to select tests from? Pfft! Child's play. Want to start testing the 100 or so most powerful tests? Want to execute an extremely thorough set of 10,000 tests? Want to select a thoroughness setting in the middle? Your wish is my command, sir. You tell me approximately how many tests you want to run and the test inputs you want to include, and I'll calculate the most powerful set of tests you can execute (based on proven applied statistics-based Design of Experiments methods) before you can say "I'm Wil Shipley and I like my TED Conference swag."

More info at:
http://hexawise.tv/intro/
or
https://hexawise.com/Hexawise_Introduction.pdf
free trials at:
http://hexawise.com/signup