The proportional sampling (PS) strategy is a partition testing strategy tha
t has been proved to have a better chance than random testing to detect at
least one failure. A near proportional sampling (NPS) strategy is one that
approximates the PS strategy when the latter is not feasible. We have earli
er proved that the (basic) maximin algorithm generates a maximin test alloc
ation, that is, an allocation of test cases that will maximally improve the
lower bound performance of the partition testing strategy, and shown that
the algorithm may serve as a systematic means of approximating the PS strat
egy. in this paper, we derive the uniqueness and completeness conditions of
generating maximin test allocations, propose the complete maximin algorith
m that generates all possible maximin test allocations and demonstrate empi
rically that the new algorithm is consistently better than random testing a
s well as several other NPS strategies. (C) 2001 Elsevier Science B.V. All
rights reserved.