Variability-Based Models for Testability Analysis of Frameworks

Divya Ranjan, Anil Kumar Tripathi

Dept. of Computer Engineering, Institute of Technology, Banaras Hindu University, Varanasi, India.
Dept. of Computer Science, Faculty of Science, Banaras Hindu University, Varanasi, India.

DOI: 10.4236/jsea.2010.35051                

Abstract

Frameworks are developed to capture the recurring design practices in terms of skeletons of software subsystems/ systems. They are designed ‘abstract’ and ‘incomplete’ and are designed with predefined points of variability, known as hot spots, to be customized later at the time of framework reuse. Frameworks are reusable entities thus demand stricter and rigorous testing in comparison to one-time use application. It would be advisable to guaranty the production of high quality frameworks without incurring heavy costs for their rigorous testing. The overall cost of framework development may be reduced by designing frameworks with high testability. This paper aims at discussing various metric models for testability analysis of frameworks in an attempt to having quantitative data on testability to be used to plan and monitor framework testing activities so that the framework testing effort and hence the overall framework development effort may be brought down. The models considered herein particularly consider that frameworks are inherently abstract and variable in nature.

Keywords

Object-Oriented Frameworks, Variability, Customizability and Testability

Conflicts of Interest

The authors declare no conflicts of interest.

References

[1]	E. Gamma, R. Helm, R. Johnson and J. M. Vlissides, “Design Patterns: Elements of Reusable Object-oriented Software,” Addison-Wesley Professional Computing Series, 1994.
[2]	T. Jeon, S. Lee and H. Seung, “Increasing the Testability of Object-oriented Frameworks with Built-in Tests,” Lecture Notes in Computer Science, Vol. 2402, January 2002, pp. 873-881.
[3]	G. Froehlich, H. J. Hoover, L. Liu and P. Sorenson, “Designing Object-oriented Frameworks,” CRC Hand- book of Object Technology, CRC Press, 1998, pp. (25)1- 21.
[4]	W. Pree, “Design Patterns for Object-oriented Software Development,” Addison-Wesley, 1995.
[5]	H. A. Schmidt, “Systematic Framework Design by Generalization,” Communications of the ACM, Vol. 40, No. 10, October 1997, pp. 48-51.
[6]	J. Al-Dallal and P. Sorenson, “System testing for Object-oriented Frameworks Using Hook Technology,” Proceedings of the 17th IEEE International Conference on Automated Software Engineering, Edinburgh, September 2002, pp. 231-236.
[7]	J. S. Poulin and J. M. Caruso, “Determining the Value of a Corporate Reuse Program,” Proceedings of the IEEE Computer Society International Software Metrics Sym- posium, Baltimore, May 1993, pp. 16-27.
[8]	E. J. Weyuker, “Testing Component-based Software: a Cautionary Tale,” IEEE Software, Vol. 15, No. 5, Septem- ber 1998, pp. 54-59.
[9]	R. V. Binder, “Testing Object-oriented Systems: Models, Patterns, and Tools,” Addison-Wesley Professional, 1999.
[10]	M. E. Fayad and D. C. Schmidt, “Object-oriented Appli- cation Frameworks,” Communications of the ACM, Vol. 40, No. 10, October 1997, pp. 32-38.
[11]	Y. Wang, D. Patel, G. King, I. Court, G. Staples, M. Ross and M. Fayad, “On Built-in Test Reuse in Object-oriented Framework Design,” ACM Computing Surveys, Vol. 32, No. 1, March 2000, pp. 7-12.
[12]	T. Jeon, H. W. Seung and S. Lee, “Embedding Built-in Tests in Hot Spots of an Object-oriented Framework,” ACM Sigplan Notices, Vol. 37, No. 8, August 2002, pp. 25-34.
[13]	J. Al-Dallal and P. Sorenson, “Estimating the Coverage of the Framework Application Reusable Cluster-based Test Cases,” Information and Software Technology, Vol. 50, No. 6, May 2008, pp. 595-604.
[14]	J. Al-Dallal and P. Sorenson, “Reusing Class-based Test Cases for Testing Object-oriented Framework Interface Classes,” Journal of Software Maintenance and Evolution: Research and Practice, Vol. 17, No. 3, May 2005, pp. 169- 196.
[15]	J. Al-Dallal and P. Sorenson, “Testing Software Assets of Framework-based Product Families During Application Engineering Stage,” Journal of Software, Vol. 3, No. 5, May 2008, pp. 11-25.
[16]	W. Tsai, Y. Tu, W. Shao and E. Ebner,“Testing Extensible Design Patterns in Object-oriented Frameworks Through Scenario Templates,” Proceeding of 23rd Annual Interna- tional Computer Software and Applications Conference, Phoenix, October 1999, pp. 166-171.
[17]	D. Ranjan and A. K. Tripathi, “Testability Analysis of Object-oriented Frameworks,” The Journal of Defense So- ftware Engineering.
[18]	M. E. Fayad, Y. Wang and G. King, “Built-in test reuse,” In: M. E. Fayad, et al., Ed., The Building Application Frameworks, John Wiley and Sons, 1999, pp.488-491.
[19]	R. V. Binder, “Design for Testability in Object-oriented Systems,” Communications of the ACM, Vol. 37, No. 9, September 1994, pp. 87-101.
[20]	J. M. Voas and K.W. Miller, “Software Testability: the New Verification,” IEEE Software, Vol. 12, No. 3, May 1995, pp. 17-28.
[21]	“Software Engineering-Product Quality,” ISO/IEC 9126, 2001.
[22]	G. Succi, A. Valerio, T. Vernazza, M. Fenaroli and P. Predonzani, “Framework Extraction with Domain Ana- lysis,” ACM Computing Surveys, Vol. 32, No. 1, March 2000.
[23]	G. Butler, “Object-oriented Frameworks,” 15th European Conference on Object-Oriented Programming, Tutorial Budapest, 2001.