Research On The Development Approach To The Object-Oriented Framework For Automatic Test Systems

As automatic test systems increasingly become larger and more complicated, the conventional software development approaches, including the conventional object-oriented software development methods, are difficult to improve the software development efficiency of automatic test systems further and to meet the user's demands because of the low reusability. Object-oriented frameworks are the way that object-oriented systems achieve the most reuse. Compared to the conventional software reuse technologies, a framework enables reuse of both code and more important architecture design. Therefore, application development based on the framework is far more likely to improve the software development efficiency. Unfortunately, the framework development is more difficult than the development of applications for lacking of standard guidelines and mature support technologies. Currently, the research and development of the object-oriented framework for automatic test systems is still in embryonic period. The purpose of the paper is to present a development methodology to the object-oriented framework for all kinds of automatic test system, which is derived by the domain analysis and research on object-oriented framework modeling based on the Unified Modeling Language (UML).Firstly, the object-oriented meta-model for automatic test systems was established through analysis of the domain characteristics and requirements. The meta-model is the basic architecture of all the object-oriented frameworks for the specific automatic test system, described by the Interface Definition Language (IDL) that is independent on the specific programming languages.Secondly, A UML profile for framework modeling based on the extensionmechanisms of UML was defined, called Framework Profile, which customizes UML for the straightforward modeling of framework hot-spots and design patterns. The semantics of the Framework Profile was formalized using the Object Constraint Language (OCL) to facilitate its understanding by the framework developers.Finally, A framework development methodology for automatic test systems based on the meta-model was presented. The new methodology is a hot-spot driven and iterative development process until all framework hot-spots are identified and designed flexibly, including hot-spot identification, framework design, framework implementation and framework test stage.The new framework development methodology will provide the guidelines for the object-oriented framework development of the specific automatic test system, which contributes to quickly defining object model of specific framework domain, straightforwardly identifying hot-spots, and enabling the framework to have good reusablility, flexibility and extensibility. Therefore, the research will be a signification for improving the development efficiency, reducing the cose, increasing the stability and maintenance of automatic test systems.