A Testability Analysis Framework for Non-Functional Properties

This paper presents background, the basic steps and an example for a testability analysis framework for non-functional properties

A survey on software testability

Context: Software testability is the degree to which a software system or a unit under test supports its own testing. To predict and improve software testability, a large number of techniques and metrics have been proposed by both practitioners and researchers in the last several decades. Reviewing and getting an overview of the entire state-of-the-art and state-of-the-practice in this area is often challenging for a practitioner or a new researcher. Objective: Our objective is to summarize the body of knowledge in this area and to benefit the readers (both practitioners and researchers) in preparing, measuring and improving software testability. Method: To address the above need, the authors conducted a survey in the form of a systematic literature mapping (classification) to find out what we as a community know about this topic. After compiling an initial pool of 303 papers, and applying a set of inclusion/exclusion criteria, our final pool included 208 papers. Results: The area of software testability has been comprehensively studied by researchers and practitioners. Approaches for measurement of testability and improvement of testability are the most-frequently addressed in the papers. The two most often mentioned factors affecting testability are observability and controllability. Common ways to improve testability are testability transformation, improving observability, adding assertions, and improving controllability. Conclusion: This paper serves for both researchers and practitioners as an "index" to the vast body of knowledge in the area of testability. The results could help practitioners measure and improve software testability in their projects

Self-Test Components for Highly Reconfigurable Systems

Abstract Verification of component-based systems presents new challenges not yet completely addressed by existing testing techniques. This paper proposes a new approach for automatically testing highly reconfigurable component-based systems, i.e., systems that can be obtained by changing some components. The paper presents an industrial case that motivates our research and proposes a testing infrastructure that tracks run-time information for components. The collected information is used for automatic testing new versions of existing components and new configurations of existing systems

A Fault Taxonomy for Component-Based Software

AbstractComponent technology is increasingly used to develop modular, configurable, and reusable systems. The problem of design and implement component-based systems is addressed by many models, methodologies, tools, and frameworks. On the contrary, analysis and test are not adequately supported yet. In general, a coherent fault taxonomy is a key starting point for providing techniques and methods for assessing the quality of software and in particular of component-based systems. This paper proposes a fault taxonomy to be used to develop and evaluate testing and analysis techniques for component-based software

Understanding Class-level Testability Through Dynamic Analysis

It is generally acknowledged that software testing is both challenging and time-consuming. Understanding the factors that may positively or negatively affect testing effort will point to possibilities for reducing this effort. Consequently there is a significant body of research that has investigated relationships between static code properties and testability. The work reported in this paper complements this body of research by providing an empirical evaluation of the degree of association between runtime properties and class-level testability in object-oriented (OO) systems. The motivation for the use of dynamic code properties comes from the success of such metrics in providing a more complete insight into the multiple dimensions of software quality. In particular, we investigate the potential relationships between the runtime characteristics of production code, represented by Dynamic Coupling and Key Classes, and internal class-level testability. Testability of a class is consider ed here at the level of unit tests and two different measures are used to characterise those unit tests. The selected measures relate to test scope and structure: one is intended to measure the unit test size, represented by test lines of code, and the other is designed to reflect the intended design, represented by the number of test cases. In this research we found that Dynamic Coupling and Key Classes have significant correlations with class-level testability measures. We therefore suggest that these properties could be used as indicators of class-level testability. These results enhance our current knowledge and should help researchers in the area to build on previous results regarding factors believed to be related to testability and testing. Our results should also benefit practitioners in future class testability planning and maintenance activities

Ingeniería del Software III: Una Asignatura de Ingeniería del Software Orientada a Objetos

En esta contribución describimos el programa de la asignatura Ingeniería del Software III, dentro del plan de estudios implantado en 1993 en la Facultad de Informática de la Universidad de Deusto. Esta asignatura es troncal y se imparte para los alumnos de 5° curso durante el primer cuatrimestre. Mediante su docencia, nuestra intención es acercar a nuestros alumnos los conceptos de la disciplina ya adquiridos en cursos anteriores, pero desde el punto de vista de la Tecnología Orientada a Objetos. Esta asignatura se ha impartido durante este curso por vez primera y en este artículo también comentamos las incidencias de esta primera edición

Role of Testers in Selecting an Enterprise Architecture Solution: An Exploratory Study

Software testing groups are playing an increasingly prominent role in both the software development lifecycle (SDLC) and in the long-term planning of technology architectures that support large-scale organizational information systems. The advent of integrated enterprise architectures (EA) provides new opportunities for testing groups to play a proactive role in building consistent and testable guidelines for improving enterprise-wide software quality. Given that testing groups historically have not been invited to participate in EA decisions, there is little academic literature or industry best practices on approaches that testers might use to guide their participation. This article draws lessons from the experience of a Fortune 100 corporation whose testing group used theoretical notions of “testability” to guide its involvement in an EA acquisition process. It describes how it operationalized testability criteria, incorporating controllability, observability, and simplicity, into various stages of the process and illustrates the benefits and challenges of taking such an approach