I'm making a project that needs to break some big workflows into pieces and I need to know how many possible flows does the Workflow (that I have "inputed") before has.
Does anyone know any software that can tell me that?
3
-
Unless it's severely limited (it's not possible to go back, there are very few decision branches, etc.) the answer to the question of how many possible paths exist through a workflow is "an infinite number". Software to analyze workflows would probably consider back/forward loops as a single piece no matter how many times they were called even though multiple back/forward actions could expose a memory leak.– Kate Paulk ♦Nov 17, 2015 at 15:49
-
Yep.. It makes some sense! Thanks for answering!– user3718023Nov 17, 2015 at 16:21
-
Workflow is a directed graph. For simplicity you can assume it is acyclic, so enumerating all possible test paths is like generating all paths in DAG: mathoverflow.net/questions/105330/…. Obviously, like Kate Paulk said, real workflow may contain cycles, but again, you can found on only certain nodes/edges in a graph, limit number of cycles to 1, etc.– dzieciouNov 17, 2015 at 18:50
Add a comment
|
1 Answer
Although the technical answer to your question is no, there are some methods which help you limit the number of scenarios you need to cover to provide suitable coverage.
I particularly like the Pairwise methodology
Luckily there is a (no longer free) tool called Hexawise that helps you make sense of it without a mathematics degree!
A particularly simple example is testing Credit Cards. This method will help you formulate the minimum numbers of tests to test each variation of card available.
-
-
feel free, or better yet, if you have a general question add a new one onto stack and maybe the discussion will prove helpful to others too :)– ECiurleoNov 19, 2015 at 11:50