Article

Free access

A case study in class testing

Authors:

Daniel Hoffman,

Paul StrooperAuthors Info & Claims

CASCON '93: Proceedings of the 1993 conference of the Centre for Advanced Studies on Collaborative research: software engineering - Volume 1

Pages 472 - 482

Published: 24 October 1993 Publication History

Abstract

In contrast to the explosion of activity in object-oriented design and programming, little attention has been given to object testing. In our approach, a driver class and an oracle class are developed for each class-under-test (CUT). The driver class is based on a testgraph which partially models the CUT as a state machine, but with vastly fewer states and transitions. The oracle class provides essentially the same operations as the CUT, but supports only the testgraph states and transitions. Surprisingly thorough testing is achievable with simple test graphs and oracles. The key is designing the two together, to avoid tests for which input generation and output checking are unaffordable. We illustrate our approach with a test suite developed for a class from a commercial library.

References

[1]

{Bei90} B. Beizer. Software Testing Techniques. Van Nostrand Reinhold, 1990.

Digital Library

[2]

{Cho78} T. S. Chow. Testing software design modeled by finite-state machines. IEEE Trans. Soft. Eng., SE-4(3): 178--187, May 1978.

Digital Library

[3]

{Dav88} A. M. Davis. A comparison of techniques for the specification of external system behavior. Commun. ACM, 31(9): 1098--1115, September 1988.

Digital Library

[4]

{Fie89} S. P. Fiedler. Object-oriented unit testing. Hewlett-Packard Journal, pages 69--74, April 1989.

[5]

{Fra90} P. G. Frankl. Tools for testing object-oriented programs. In Proc. Pacific Northwest Software Quality Conf., pages 309--324, 1990.

[6]

{GMH81} J. Gannon, P. McMullin, and R. Hamlet. Data-abstraction implementation, specification and testing. ACM Trans. Program Lang. Syst., 3(3): 211--223, July 1981.

Digital Library

[7]

{HMF92} M. J. Harrold, J. D. McGregor, and K. J. Fitzpatrick. Incremental testing of object-oriented class structures. In Proc. 14th Int. Conf. on Software Engineering, pages 68--80, 1992.

Digital Library

[8]

{Hof89} D. M. Hoffman. A CASE study in module testing. In Proc. Conf. Software Maintenance, pages 100--105. IEEE Computer Society, October 1989.

[9]

{How76} W. E. Howden. Reliability of the path analysis testing strategy. IEEE Trans. Soft. Eng., SE-2(3): 208--215, September 1976.

Digital Library

[10]

{HS91} D. M. Hoffman and P. A. Strooper. Automated module testing in Prolog. IEEE Trans. Soft. Eng., 17(9): 933--942, September 1991.

Digital Library

[11]

{HS93} D. M. Hoffman and P. A. Strooper. Graph-based class testing. In 7th Australian Software Engineering Conf. (to appear), 1993.

[12]

{iee82} Soft. Eng. Tech. Comm. of the IEEE Computer Society. IEEE Standard Glossary of Software Engineering Terminology, September 1982.

[13]

{McI69} D. McIllroy69. Mass-produced software components. In Proc. Conf. NATO Science Committee, 1969.

[14]

{MW92} G. Murphy and P. Wong. Object-oriented systems testing methodology: An overview. Technical Report TR92-0656, MPR Teltech Ltd., October 1992.

[15]

{Pan78} D. J. Panzl. A language for specifying software tests. In Proc. AFIPS Natl. Comp. Conf., pages 609--619. AFIPS, 1978.

[16]

{PK90} D. E. Perry and G. K. Kaiser. Adequate testing and object-oriented programming. Journal of Object-Oriented Programming, pages 13--19, January 1990.

Digital Library

[17]

{Rat9l} Rational. The C++ Booch Components-Class Catalog, 1991.

[18]

{SL89} D. P. Sidhu and T. K. Leung. Formal methods for protocol testing: A detailed study. IEEE Trans. Soft. Eng., 15(4): 413--426, April 1989.

Digital Library

[19]

{SR92} M. D. Smith and D. J. Robson. A framework for testing object-oriented programs. Journal of Object-Oriented Programming, 4(6): 45--53, June 1992.

Digital Library

[20]

{SRWG80} G. D. Schultz, D. B. Rose, C. H. West, and J. P. Gray. Executable description and validation of sna. IEEE Transactions on Communications, COM-28(4), April 1980.

[21]

{Str9l} B. Stroustrup. The C++ Programming Language. Addison-Wesley Publishing Co., 1991.

Digital Library

[22]

{TR92} C. D. Turner and D. J. Robson. The testing of object-oriented programs. Technical Report TR-13/92, University of Durham, 1992.

[23]

{Won92} P. Wong. Automated class exerciser (ACE) user's guide. Technical Report TR92-0655, MPR Teltech Ltd., September 1992.

Cited By

Chen MKao H(1999)Testing Object-Oriented Programs An Integrated ApproachProceedings of the 10th International Symposium on Software Reliability Engineering10.5555/851020.856192Online publication date: 1-Nov-1999
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.5555/851020.856192
Bochmann GPetrenko A(1994)Protocol testingProceedings of the 1994 ACM SIGSOFT international symposium on Software testing and analysis10.1145/186258.187153(109-124)Online publication date: 1-Aug-1994
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/186258.187153
Binder R(1994)Design for testability in object-oriented systemsCommunications of the ACM10.1145/182987.18407737:9(87-101)Online publication date: 1-Sep-1994
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/182987.184077
Show More Cited By

A case study in class testing
1. Software and its engineering
  1. Software creation and management
    1. Software verification and validation
      1. Software defect analysis
  2. Software notations and tools
    1. General programming languages

Recommendations

Complete IOCO test cases: a case study
A-TEST 2016: Proceedings of the 7th International Workshop on Automating Test Case Design, Selection, and Evaluation

Input/Output Transition Systems (IOTSs) have been widely used as test models in model-based testing. Traditionally, input output conformance testing (IOCO) has been used to generate random test cases from IOTSs. A recent test case generation method for ...
A Framework for Specification-Based Class Testing
ICECCS '02: Proceedings of the Eighth International Conference on Engineering of Complex Computer Systems

Class testing is the base of object-oriented softwaretesting. It involves three aspects -- testing each method,testing the relations among class methods and testinginheriting relation between class and subclass. Ratherthan concerning the whole class ...
Applying Conventional Testing Techniques for Class Testing
COMPSAC '96: Proceedings of the 20th Conference on Computer Software and Applications

Abstract: We discuss how conventional testing criteria such as branch coverage can be applied to the testing of member functions inside a class. To support such testing techniques we employ symbolic execution techniques and finite state machines (FSMs). ...

Comments

Information & Contributors

Information

Published In

cover image DL Hosted proceedings

CASCON '93: Proceedings of the 1993 conference of the Centre for Advanced Studies on Collaborative research: software engineering - Volume 1

October 1993

12 pages

Editors:
Ann Gawman
IBM Toronto Laboratory
,
Evelyn Kidd
National Research Council
,
Per-Åke Larson
University of Waterloo
,
Program Chairs:
Jacob Slonim
IBM Centre for Advanced Studies
,
W. Morven Gentleman
NRC Software Engineering Laboratory

Sponsors

IBM Centre for Advanced Studies (CAS)
NRC: National Research Council - Canada

Publisher

IBM Press

Publication History

Published: 24 October 1993

Qualifiers

Article

Acceptance Rates

Overall Acceptance Rate 24 of 90 submissions, 27%

Contributors

Other Metrics

View Article Metrics

Bibliometrics & Citations

Bibliometrics

Article Metrics

4
Total Citations
View Citations
346
Total Downloads

Downloads (Last 12 months)12
Downloads (Last 6 weeks)2

Reflects downloads up to 01 Nov 2024

Other Metrics

View Author Metrics

Citations

Cited By

Chen MKao H(1999)Testing Object-Oriented Programs An Integrated ApproachProceedings of the 10th International Symposium on Software Reliability Engineering10.5555/851020.856192Online publication date: 1-Nov-1999
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.5555/851020.856192
Bochmann GPetrenko A(1994)Protocol testingProceedings of the 1994 ACM SIGSOFT international symposium on Software testing and analysis10.1145/186258.187153(109-124)Online publication date: 1-Aug-1994
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/186258.187153
Binder R(1994)Design for testability in object-oriented systemsCommunications of the ACM10.1145/182987.18407737:9(87-101)Online publication date: 1-Sep-1994
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/182987.184077
Murphy GTownsend PWong P(1994)Experiences with cluster and class testingCommunications of the ACM10.1145/182987.18299037:9(39-47)Online publication date: 1-Sep-1994
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/182987.182990

View Options

View options

PDF

View or Download as a PDF file.

eReader

View online with eReader.

Get Access

Login options

Check if you have access through your login credentials or your institution to get full access on this article.

Full Access

Get this Publication

Media

Figures

Other

Tables

View Table of Contents