ADLscope: an automated specification-based unit testing tool

Abstract

Specification-based testing is important because it relates directly to what the program is supposed todoand can detect certain errors that are often not detected bytraditional codebased testing techniques such as branch coverage and statement coverage. We have devel oped an automated testing tool, called ADLscope, that utilizes the formal specification of a program unit asthe basis for test coverage measurement. A tester uses ADLscope totest Application Programmatic Interfaces (APIs) written inthe Cprogramming language. The API must be formally specified in the Assertion Definition Language (ADL), a language developed at Sun Microsystems Laboratories. The tester uses ADLscope to generate cov erage conditions fi-om a program's ADL specifications. When the API is tested, ADL scope automatically measures how many ofthe coverage conditions have been covered by the tests. An uncovered condition usually means that certain aspects ofthe specification have not been thoroughly exercised by the implementation. The tester uses this informa tion to develop new test data that exercise the uncovered conditions. In this paper, we focus on the following aspects of ADLscope: the design and implementation of ADL scope and the specification-based coverage metrics used inADLscope.