Some Techniques for the Assessment and Improvement of Testability for the Object Oriented Software

Abstract

With the increasing emphasis on object oriented paradigm, a number of object oriented testing techniques have been developed to test the object oriented software. Some of these techniques are just an adaptation of the conventional testing techniques to the object oriented software and some are true object oriented testing techniques. Testing can be made more effective and less difficult if the testability of the software is increased. The purpose of this work is twofold: 1) to develop new object oriented testing techniques and 2) to assess the class testability in order to ease the testing. A number of object oriented testing techniques are available in literature to test the object oriented software. We have done an extensive survey of these testing techniques in order to provide the issues in object oriented testing and describe briefly most of the testing techniques developed at different levels (unit level, integration level, and system level). Two object oriented testing techniques are proposed based on the concept of design by contract. One of the techniques is based on the data flow testing and another is a state based testing technique. Design by contract is a methodology to improve the testability of the software. Hence, the techniques developed help in improving the testability of the software. These techniques are validated through a number of programs. An extensive survey of testability research is done in the object oriented software and the conventional software. A study is performed at the class level to assess the testability of four large open source java systems. newline