Class (integration) test orders: further research and pratice

点击翻译按钮获取中文摘要

Any incremental class testing approach for an object-oriented software system has to answer the two following questions: What integration process, indicating in which order classes are (integration) tested, should be selected? Which test design techniques should be used to unit and integration test classes? Although there is a fairly large number of reported works on both questions, much remains to be done. On the one hand, class (integration) testing techniques have mostly been described without any consideration for any integration process. On the other hand, integration processes have been suggested without much consideration for how they could be used in practice, along with class (integration) test design techniques. It appears that there is a lack of research and practical results on how a class integration process can be used to conduct class (integration) testing. Therefore, it is often difficult to answer any of the two aforementioned questions: We do not know how the two kinds of strategies can be applied together, and what kind of benefits would be revealed by such combination. This research proposal aims at providing more trustworthy (research) results to test engineers and managers on how, and to what extent, class (integration) testing techniques benefit (or not) from using an integration process. This research may also lead to the definition of new class (integration) testing techniques and new class integration processes, as well as prototype tools supporting the (semi-)automation of these strategies. The overall objective is to facilitate class (integration) testing in object-oriented software systems, thus likely leading to reduced testing costs.