Regression testing is a commonly used activity whose purpose is to determine whether the modifications made to a software system have introduced new faults. For many large, complex, software systems the retest all strategy is not practical: the resources required to reexecute and verify all available test cases (i.e., time and human effort) are prohibitive. Ad hoc methods are not desirable, as they can compromise the reliability of the regression test activity and consequently the reliability of the software system being tested. In this paper we present a new technique for selecting regression test cases based on the modifications that have been made on the program. The technique, which is based on the idea of directly comparing source files from the old and the new version of the program, has been implemented in a tool called Pythia. A novel characteristic of Pythia, which is capable of analyzing large software systems written in C, is that it has been implemented primarily through the integration of standard, well known, UNIX 1 programs.
Database systems play an important role in nearly every modern organization, yet relatively little research effort has focused on how to test them. This paper discusses issues arising in testing database systems, presents an approach to testing database applications, and describes AGENDA, a set of tools to facilitate the use of this approach. In testing such applications, the state of the database before and after the user's operation plays an important role, along with the user's input and the system output. A framework for testing database applications is introduced. A complete tool set, based on this framework, has been prototyped. The components of this system are a parsing tool that gathers relevant information from the database schema and application, a tool that populates the database with meaningful data that satisfy database constraints, a tool that generates test cases for the application, a tool that checks the resulting database state after operations are performed by a database application, and a tool that assists the tester in checking the database application's output. The design and implementation of each component of the system are discussed. The prototype described here is limited to applications consisting of a single SQL query.
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