article

Investigating the use of analysis contracts to support fault isolation in object oriented code

Authors:

H. SunAuthors Info & Claims

ACM SIGSOFT Software Engineering Notes, Volume 27, Issue 4

Pages 70 - 80

https://doi.org/10.1145/566171.566183

Published: 01 July 2002 Publication History

Abstract

A number of activities involved in testing software are known to be difficult and time consuming. Among them is the isolation of faults once failures have been detected. In this paper, we investigate how the instrumentation of contracts could address this issue. Contracts are known to be a useful technique to specify the precondition and postcondition of operations and class invariants, thus making the definition of object-oriented analysis or design elements more precise. Our aim in this paper is to reuse and instrument contracts to ease testing. A thorough case study is run where we define contracts, instrument them using a commercial tool, and assess the benefits and limitations of doing so to support the isolation of faults. We then draw practical conclusions regarding the applicability of the approach and its limitations.

References

[1]

B. Baudry, V. Le Hanh, J. M. Jezequel and Y. Le Traon, "Building Trust into OO Components using a Genetic Analogy," Proc. International Symposium on Software Reliability Engineering (ISSRE), San Jose, California, pp. 4-14, October 8-11, 2000.

Digital Library

[2]

B. Baudry, Y. Le Traon and J. M. Jezequel, "Robustness and Diagnosability of OO Systems Designed by Contracts," Proc. 7th International Software Metrics Symposium, London, England, pp. 272-283, 4-6 April, 2001.

Digital Library

[3]

R. V. Binder, Testing Object-Oriented Systems - Models, Patterns, and Tools, Addison-Wesley, 1999.

Digital Library

[4]

L. C. Briand, Y. Labiche and H. Sun, "Investigating the Use of Analysis Contracts to Improve the Testability of Object Oriented Code," Carleton University, Technical Report SCE-01-10, 2001, www.sce.carleton.ca/Squall/Articles/TR_SCE-01-10.pdf.

[5]

P. Chevalley and P. Thévenod-Fosse, "An Empirical Evaluation of Statistical Testing Designed from UML State Diagrams: the Flight Guidance System Case Study," Proc. 12th IEEE International Symposium on Software Reliability Engineering, Hong-Kong (China), pp. 254-263, 27-30 November, 2001.

Digital Library

[6]

D. Coleman, P. Arnold, S. Bodoff, C. Dollin, H. GilChrist, F. Hayes and P. Jeremaes, Object-Oriented Development - The Fusion Method, Prentice Hall Ed., 1994.

Digital Library

[7]

JContract, "Using Design by Contract to Automate Java Software and Component Testing," ParaSoft Corporation, www.parasoft.com/products/jtest/papers/tech_dbc.htm.

[8]

J. M. Jezequel, D. Deveaux and Y. Le Traon, "Reliable Object: Lightweight Testing for OO Languages," IEEE Software, vol. 18 (4), pp. 76-83, 2001.

Digital Library

[9]

S. Kim, J. A. Clark and J. A. McDermid, "The Rigorous Generation of Java Mutation Using HAZOP," Proc. 12th International Conference on Software & Systems Engineering and their Applications (ICSSEA'99), CNAM - Paris, France, pp. 9-10(11), December 8-10, 1999.

[10]

S. Kim, J. A. Clark and J. A. McDermid, "Class Mutation: Mutation Testing for Object-Oriented Programs," Proc. Net.ObjectDays, Erfurt, Germany, October 9-12, 2000.

[11]

S. Kim, J. A. Clark and J. A. McDermid, "Investigating the effectiveness of Object-Oriented Testing Strategies with the Mutation Method," Proc. Mutation 2000, San Jose, October 6-7, 2000.

[12]

K. N. King and A. J. Offutt, "A Fortran Language System for Mutation-Based Software Testing," Software - Practice and Experience, vol. 21 (7), pp. 686-718, 1991.

Digital Library

[13]

B. Meyer, "Design by Contracts," IEEE Computer, vol. 25 (10), pp. 40-52, 1992.

Digital Library

[14]

OCL, "Object Constraint Language," Object Management Group, V1.4, 2001.

[15]

T. J. Ostrand and M. J. Balcer, "The Category-Partition Method for Specifying and Generating Functional Test," Communications of the ACM, vol. 31 (6), pp. 676-686, 1988.

Digital Library

[16]

D. Rosenblum, "A Practical Approach to Programming with Assertions," IEEE Trans. on Software Engineering, vol. 21 (11), pp. 19-31, 1995.

Digital Library

[17]

J. Warmer and A. Kleppe, The Object Constraint Language, Addison-Wesley, 1999.

Digital Library

Cited By

Ceballos RAbreu RVarela-Vaca ÁGasca R(2019)Model-Based Software DebuggingFault Diagnosis of Dynamic Systems10.1007/978-3-030-17728-7_15(365-387)Online publication date: 23-Jun-2019
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-17728-7_15
Bertolino AMarchetti EPolini A(2003)Integration of “Components” to Test Software ComponentsElectronic Notes in Theoretical Computer Science10.1016/S1571-0661(04)81024-782:6(44-54)Online publication date: Sep-2003
https://doi.org/10.1016/S1571-0661(04)81024-7
Kochhar PLo DMendes ECounsell SPetersen K(2017)Revisiting Assert Use in GitHub ProjectsProceedings of the 21st International Conference on Evaluation and Assessment in Software Engineering10.1145/3084226.3084259(298-307)Online publication date: 15-Jun-2017
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3084226.3084259
Show More Cited By

Index Terms

Investigating the use of analysis contracts to support fault isolation in object oriented code
1. Software and its engineering
  1. Software creation and management
    1. Software verification and validation
      1. Software defect analysis
        Software testing and debugging

Index terms have been assigned to the content through auto-classification.

Recommendations

Investigating the use of analysis contracts to support fault isolation in object oriented code
ISSTA '02: Proceedings of the 2002 ACM SIGSOFT international symposium on Software testing and analysis

A number of activities involved in testing software are known to be difficult and time consuming. Among them is the isolation of faults once failures have been detected. In this paper, we investigate how the instrumentation of contracts could address ...
Investigating the use of analysis contracts to improve the testability of object-oriented code

A number of activities involved in testing software are known to be difficult and time consuming. Among them is the definition and coding of test oracles and the isolation of faults once failures have been detected. Through a thorough and rigorous ...
Modelling Legal Contracts as Processes
DEXA '00: Proceedings of the 11th International Workshop on Database and Expert Systems Applications

This paper concentrates on the representation of legal relations that occur between parties once they have entered a contractual agreement and their evolution as the agreement progresses through time. Contracts are regarded as processes and they are ...

Comments

Information & Contributors

Information

Published In

cover image ACM SIGSOFT Software Engineering Notes

ACM SIGSOFT Software Engineering Notes Volume 27, Issue 4

July 2002

242 pages

ISSN:0163-5948

DOI:10.1145/566171

Issue’s Table of Contents

ISSTA '02: Proceedings of the 2002 ACM SIGSOFT international symposium on Software testing and analysis
July 2002
248 pages
ISBN:1581135629
DOI:10.1145/566172
Program Chair:
Phyllis G. Frankl

Copyright © 2002 ACM.

Permission to make digital or hard copies of all or part of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for components of this work owned by others than ACM must be honored. Abstracting with credit is permitted. To copy otherwise, or republish, to post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission and/or a fee. Request permissions from [email protected]

Publisher

Association for Computing Machinery

New York, NY, United States

Publication History

Published: 01 July 2002

Published in SIGSOFT Volume 27, Issue 4

Check for updates

Author Tags

Qualifiers

Article

Contributors

Other Metrics

View Article Metrics

Bibliometrics & Citations

Bibliometrics

Article Metrics

29
Total Citations
View Citations
942
Total Downloads

Downloads (Last 12 months)4
Downloads (Last 6 weeks)0

Reflects downloads up to 03 Oct 2024

Other Metrics

View Author Metrics

Citations

Cited By

Ceballos RAbreu RVarela-Vaca ÁGasca R(2019)Model-Based Software DebuggingFault Diagnosis of Dynamic Systems10.1007/978-3-030-17728-7_15(365-387)Online publication date: 23-Jun-2019
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-17728-7_15
Bertolino AMarchetti EPolini A(2003)Integration of “Components” to Test Software ComponentsElectronic Notes in Theoretical Computer Science10.1016/S1571-0661(04)81024-782:6(44-54)Online publication date: Sep-2003
https://doi.org/10.1016/S1571-0661(04)81024-7
Kochhar PLo DMendes ECounsell SPetersen K(2017)Revisiting Assert Use in GitHub ProjectsProceedings of the 21st International Conference on Evaluation and Assessment in Software Engineering10.1145/3084226.3084259(298-307)Online publication date: 15-Jun-2017
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3084226.3084259
Casalnuovo CDevanbu POliveira AFilkov VRay BBertolino ACanfora GElbaum S(2015)Assert use in GitHub projectsProceedings of the 37th International Conference on Software Engineering - Volume 110.5555/2818754.2818846(755-766)Online publication date: 16-May-2015
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.5555/2818754.2818846
Casalnuovo CDevanbu POliveira AFilkov VRay B(2015)Assert Use in GitHub Projects2015 IEEE/ACM 37th IEEE International Conference on Software Engineering10.1109/ICSE.2015.88(755-766)Online publication date: May-2015
https://doi.org/10.1109/ICSE.2015.88
Araujo WBriand LLabiche Y(2014)On the Effectiveness of Contracts as Test Oracles in the Detection and Diagnosis of Functional Faults in Concurrent Object-Oriented SoftwareIEEE Transactions on Software Engineering10.1109/TSE.2014.233982940:10(971-992)Online publication date: 1-Oct-2014
https://doi.org/10.1109/TSE.2014.2339829
Rauf IPorres I(2011)Designing level 3 behavioral RESTful web service interfacesACM SIGAPP Applied Computing Review10.1145/2034594.203459611:3(19-31)Online publication date: 1-Aug-2011
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/2034594.2034596
Porres IRauf IChu WWong WPalakal MHung C(2011)Modeling behavioral RESTful web service interfaces in UMLProceedings of the 2011 ACM Symposium on Applied Computing10.1145/1982185.1982521(1598-1605)Online publication date: 21-Mar-2011
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/1982185.1982521
Jimenez-Ramirez AGasca RVarela-Vaca A(2011)Contract-based test generation for data flow of business processes using constraint programming2011 FIFTH INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE ON RESEARCH CHALLENGES IN INFORMATION SCIENCE10.1109/RCIS.2011.6006841(1-12)Online publication date: May-2011
https://doi.org/10.1109/RCIS.2011.6006841
Porres IRauf I(2010)From Nondeterministic UML Protocol Statemachines to Class ContractsProceedings of the 2010 Third International Conference on Software Testing, Verification and Validation10.1109/ICST.2010.62(107-116)Online publication date: 6-Apr-2010
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1109/ICST.2010.62
Show More Cited By

View Options

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

View options

PDF

View or Download as a PDF file.

eReader

View online with eReader.

Media

Figures

Other

Tables

View Issue’s Table of Contents