On integration testing object-oriented software systems

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Most, if not all, of the software testing approaches are incremental in nature: either by following an agile (or extreme) development process or a unified process, testing activities are performed in increments. 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 applied 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. This, along with a lack of tool support, is likely one of the main reasons why the notion of integration testing is not well understood by practitioners and therefore why integration testing activities are seldom performed (e.g., with the intend to reveal integration faults).