Research On The Contract-Checking Based Software Testing For Component-Based Software System

In the past decade years, component-based software development has been a new trend after object-oriented technology. The increasing mature of this development method leads component-oriented technology to spreading quickly in programming domain. Component has many unique characteristics, which enabled reusing it to construct new software system have more strength than using traditional structure-oriented and object-oriented technologies. Meanwhile, the introduction of component-oriented technology also brings a series of problems, including analysis, design, implement, test, maintenance, and so on. This thesis focuses on testing, maintenance and quality assurance for component-based software.From two points of view as component users or component integration testers, this thesis try to analyze the component testing challenges and problems through researching on component-oriented technology and component-based software engineering (CBSE). Based on the theory of Design By Contract, which first introduced by Bertrand Meyer [1], this thesis proposes a new testing method, contract-checking based integration testing for component-based software. Provided by component vendor, component contract document records component interface behaviors, and restricts the interactions between component and glue code. Then, test tool designed by us captures the interaction processes, validate it. Through the validation, we can reach the objective of integration testing system. So contract elevates component traceability and testability, and becomes the core of this testing method.Discussing a number of challenges brought out by component-oriented technology, combining traditional block-box and white-box test technology, regarding the above test method as core contents, this thesis designs an integrated testing framework, which covers from component verification testing to integration testing. In theory, this framework improves and reinforces the traditional software test technology. In practice, the framework can lighten testing tasks for component user and integration tester, and assures quality and reliability of component-based software systems.At last, this thesis discusses some drawbacks of this testing method, and works in the future, which guides the step-researchers and indicates the scalability and tactility of research works.