Developing an object-oriented software testing and maintenance environment

Abstract

The object-oriented (OO) paradigm is rapidly gaining acceptance in the software industry. However, the powerful features of this new paradigm also introduce a new set of OO software testing and maintelrance problems. The pioneering work in identifying the.se new problems includes [7, 10-12, 14, 16, 18]. The problems can be summarized as: 1) the understanding problem; 2) the complex interdependency problem; 3) the object state behavior testing pr'ol> lem; and 4) the tool sirpport problem. Detailed di.scussions of these problems will be provided later. Our industrial experience confirms these discoveries.In an attempt to solve these problems, the Software Engineering Center for Telecommunications at the University of Texas at Arlington (UTA) and Fujitsu Network Transmission Systems, Inc., have undertaken a major effort in the past three years to develop a methodology for OO .software testing and maintenance. The results we have obtained .so far include: 1) an OO test model and a reverse engineering approach to recovering the designs of C++ programs, 2) a three level .scherrra and algorithriis for data flow testing of OO pr'ograms, 3) definition and identification of class firewalls and a test strateg)' lor regression testing of C++ programs, 4) a program-based rrrethod for object state behavior testing, and .^i) a scenariobased method for integration and acceptance testing. Parts of these results have been implemented in an integrated object-oriented testing and maintenance (OOTM) environment.Currently, most software development or'ganizations are still in the process of observing and/or making the transition to the OO paradigm; only a few have experienced the difficirlties of testing and maintaining 75

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