Component-based Software Testing Methods And Applications

As an important part in the software engineering, software testing is the primary instrumentality to guarantee the quality and reliability of the software. The evolution of the software development technology relatively causes the development of the software testing technology. Component-Based Software Engineering (CBSE) nowadays becomes a popular method of Software Engineering. Some characteristics of component-based system make it hardly to be test by traditional way. It is in urgent to find some new testing methods to fitting for the component-based software system.Our research aims at the method of user oriented testing for component-based system. The method allows retrieving test cases from a customer's specification and using them to validate the component's validity. The paper presents a Framework, which is runs the test cases using a deployment mechanism to test the candidate components. The framework implements the re-use of the test cases.Our main works list as follows:1. First, the characteristics of component-based systems were discussed, and component testing technology based of UML was researched. The test strategy based on UML was given and the testability of UML state-charts was analyzed in detail.2. We use some criteria of testing coverage presented by A.J.Offutt for reference, and define the criteria of testing coverage in full parameters coverage level. The paper gives a method of automated test case generation based on the UML state-charts and OCL constraint document.3. A concept of the user oriented framework for component deployment testing is given. And a relevant model which includes generating test cases, running the test cases by deploy the components' interface, analyzing the testing result and exporting the report forms is set up. The model can generate test cases without any real component available. It decouples the test case generation and the implements details.4. On the basis of the theories before, an integrated system for deployment testing has been completed. The testing with a FTP client software is performed to validate the system.