What is Pairwise?

AnkrPt Pairwise is Kimputing’s free utility to support both manual and data driven testing by minimizing the number of tests needed while simultaneously maximizing test coverage. It is based on the “pairwise testing” (or “all-pairs testing”) principle that most defects trigger from either a single input parameter or interactions between pairs of parameters.

Do More With Less

Pairwise testing is highly efficient, whether your dataset is simple or very complex. Simple datasets are difficult to create manually, and additional complexity becomes impossible. It is significantly faster and easier, while reducing the number of test cases needed to provide effective data coverage, to create tests that will uncover defects.

Criteria, Required Tests, Constraints, and Negative Testing

AnkrPt Pairwise shines where other pairwise engines fall short. It provides the Criteria to produce tests, supports Required Tests functionality allowing users to force specific interactions and test cases, provides Constraint tools to eliminate undesirable tests.

Our tool also supports Negative Testing across all functionalities, including required tests and constraints, allowing you to verify and test for appropriate error handling and application stability when using invalid inputs.

The ROI of Pairwise Testing

As a free tool, AnkrPt Pairwise drives immediate ROI. However, assuming a manual testing cost of $40 per hour and 10 minutes per test run, a test ran once per week drives a cost of $260 per year.

If eliminating just one test saves $260/year, it’s not difficult to see the dramatic ROI AnkrPt Pairwise will drive across your entire project. Plus, maximizing test confidence while minimizing test frequency enables your team to drive incredible value by accelerating your development cycle with increased confidence.

AnkrPt Pairwise is a Free Utility!

Kimputing is passionate about changing the way our partners approach testing. We care about driving high-value outcomes, and intelligent test data is a critical part of that process. Pairwise combinatorial testing is a critical part of our process, and when we couldn’t find a tool that delivered what we needed, we developed our own.

We hope that AnkrPt Pairwise helps your team as much as it has helped ours, and we are happy to provide you with this utility free of charge! Get in touch to learn how to combine AnkrPt Pairwise with AnkrPt CenterTest, our sophisticated test automation framework, to supercharge your entire QA process.

Download and start using Pairwise today!

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Frequently Asked Questions

Pairwise, or all-pairs, is a testing technique based on the principle that most defects trigger with either a single input parameter or an interaction between pairs of parameters. So pairwise testing is simply the ability to pair all your test criteria into as few tests as possible. Please refer to the AnkrPt Pairwise documentation for more information, and/or read our blog article “Pairwise Testing – Why it Matters“.

Except for the most simple systems, testing every possibility is just not feasible. With even 10 fields containing only a small number of values, a cartesian product of tests results in thousands, millions, or even more, tests. Pairwise is a balance between coverage (90%+) and effort (smallest number of tests).

Most testing is random or exploratory testing, so you’re left guessing if you’ve tested enough or not. Pairwise guarantees all pairs are tested which provides a high degree of confidence in coverage, some say as much as 90% or more. With the ability to add required tests, constraints, and negative tests, that confidence level goes up. Is that enough? Only you can say.

Do the following to generate your first tests:

  1. Double-click the downloaded AnkrPt Pairwise jar file which starts a graphical application.
  2. Download this sample file which includes a complete generation file.
  3. Open the file in AnkrPt Pairwise.
  4. Click Generate.
  5. Open the output file to see your results.

Refer to the AnkrPt Pairwise documentation for more information.

AnkrPt Pairwise is a Java application requiring Java 11 or higher. This means there are a few small steps needed to set it up. Please refer to the AnkrPt Pairwise documentation for more information.

This is likely due to a Windows Registry problem. A simple workaround is to start AnkrPt Pairwise directly from the command line with the following:

javaw pairwise-1.00.RELEASE.jar

To fix the problem, refer to our AnkrPt Pairwise documentation in the FAQ section for how to update your registry.

Yes. You can download this sample file to get started. You can also refer to the AnkrPt Pairwise documentation section titled “Example Files” for several examples of the different structures of a criteria file. Simply copy/paste the criteria into your file. We chose this approach to ensure compatibility regardless of download restrictions.

In its simplest form, you define criteria and generate tests. For complete documentation, go to AnkrPt Pairwise documentation.

You can update to the latest version at any time by simply downloading the latest and moving it to your installation folder. Refer to AnkrPt Pairwise documentation. for complete documentation.

Yes, you can install AnkrPt Pairwise on as many machines as you want.

Yes. We don’t track any personal information but do track basic analytics such as the number of parameters used, the number of tests generated, the time it took to generate, and the memory and processor type of your computer. We use this for performance analytics and to determine how often AnkrPt Pairwise is used. We are also curious how large the test sets are. Refer to our Pairwise blogs for ideas on Why it Matters, Choose Your Data Wisely (coming soon), By The Numbers (coming soon), and more.

You can join us in the AnkrPt Slack, where members of the AnkrPt community can help you with any questions or problems!