Interface-based Semi-automated Testing of Software Components

Abstract

Abstract-The component-based software development enables to construct applications from reusable components providing particular functionalities and simplifies application evolution. To ensure the correct functioning of a given component-based application and its preservation across evolution steps, it is necessary to test not only the functional properties of the individual components but also the correctness of their mutual interactions and cooperation. This is complicated by the fact that third-party components often come without source code and/or documentation of functional and interaction properties. In this paper, we describe an approach for performing rigorous semi-automated testing of software components with unavailable source code. Utilizing an automated analysis of the component interfaces, scenarios invoking methods with generated parameter values are created. When they are performed on a stable application version and their runtime effects (component interactions) are recorded, the resulting scenarios with recorded effects can be used for accurate regression testing of newly installed versions of selected components. Our experiences with a prototype implementation show that the approach has acceptable demands on manual work and computational resources.

Deep Object Comparison for Interface-based Regression Testing of Software Components

“…As it was mentioned in Section I, the interface-based regression testing of software components is designed to uncover any changes in a component-based application's behavior after the installation of a new version of a component [2]. The changes are detected during comparison of the testing scenario generated and stored from the application with the old version of the component and the scenario generated and stored from the application with the new version of the component [2].…”

“…Nevertheless, in reality, an unwanted error can be introduced into the new version of the component, a side effect of a method invocation can be added or removed, a computation can be prolonged leading to a time-out to expire, and so on. So, when installing a new version of a component to a functional component-based application, adequate regression testing is desirable even when there are no apparent external changes of the new version of the component in comparison to the old version [2].…”

“…During our previous research, we developed an approach for interface-based regression testing of software components, whose source code is not available (e.g., third-party software components). The approach is tailored for the situation when there is a new version of a component installed in a component-based application and we want to check if it exhibits the same behavior within the application as its old version [2].…”

“…The experimental implementation of the approach, which was described in [2] in detail, was designed for the OSGi [3] component model for Java programming language, but the ideas behind it can be used for other component models and programming languages as well. The overall process starts with the analysis of the services and their methods of the software components of the entire component-based applica-tion under test.…”

“…The result is a testing scenario with actions (i.e., invocations) and their consequences, which can be saved to a file. If this process is performed prior and after the installation of a new version of a component to the component-based application under test, the detailed comparison of these two saved scenarios can uncover changes in the behavior of the application caused by the new version of the component [2].…”