Research On Object Oriented Software Automated Unit Test Technique

Firstly, the paper introduces software test, object oriented software test, automated software test, and automated unit test for object-oriented software. Then, the paper focuses on the research of automated unit testing technique based on the specification of detailed design. A method is proposed for automated unit test of object-oriented program, which uses the specification of extended state diagram as the input. This method directly access state variable of the object under test, so may achieve sufficient test. A prototype system of this method is developed. There still is some problem to be resolved in this method. The major one is that the state definition can be too complex to be described accurately. The state definition may contain complex discrete state variable distribution which can not be described as combination of state variable value sections. Without extra mechanism to support this method, the complex distribution can not be described. A potential method to resolve this problem is to design a kind of open mechanism through which the user can summit complex state definition in the form of a state affirming function. The function will be called during the test process to detect the object's state. When it comes to the commercial and practical realization of this method, it is very important to resolve this problem. Our future study plan focuses on the resolving of this problem.