Testing Object-oriented Systems

Book excerpt: More than ever, mission-critical and business-critical applications depend on object-oriented (OO) software. Testing techniques tailored to the unique challenges of OO technology are necessary to achieve high reliability and quality. "Testing Object-Oriented Systems: Models, Patterns, and Tools" is an authoritative guide to designing and automating test suites for OO applications. This comprehensive book explains why testing must be model-based and provides in-depth coverage of techniques to develop testable models from state machines, combinational logic, and the Unified Modeling Language (UML). It introduces the test design pattern and presents 37 patterns that explain how to design responsibility-based test suites, how to tailor integration and regression testing for OO code, how to test reusable components and frameworks, and how to develop highly effective test suites from use cases. Effective testing must be automated and must leverage object technology. The author describes how to design and code specification-based assertions to offset testability losses due to inheritance and polymorphism. Fifteen micro-patterns present oracle strategies--practical solutions for one of the hardest problems in test design. Seventeen design patterns explain how to automate your test suites with a coherent OO test harness framework. The author provides thorough coverage of testing issues such as: The bug hazards of OO programming and differences from testing procedural code How to design responsibility-based tests for classes, clusters, and subsystems using class invariants, interface data flow models, hierarchic state machines, class associations, and scenario analysis How to support reuse by effective testing of abstract classes, generic classes, components, and frameworks How to choose an integration strategy that supports iterative and incremental development How to achieve comprehensive system testing with testable use cases How to choose a regression test approach How to develop expected test results and evaluate the post-test state of an object How to automate testing with assertions, OO test drivers, stubs, and test frameworks Real-world experience, world-class best practices, and the latest research in object-oriented testing are included. Practical examples illustrate test design and test automation for Ada 95, C++, Eiffel, Java, Objective-C, and Smalltalk. The UML is used throughout, but the test design patterns apply to systems developed with any OO language or methodology. 0201809389B04062001