Software testing using analysis and design based techniques
Marc Roper, Ab Rashid Bin Ab Rahim · Software Testing Verification and Reliability · 1993
Abstract This paper presents a way of generating acceptance and systems test data from documents produced as part of the traditional structured approaches to systems analysis and design. Entity‐relationship diagrams are analysed in a fashion similar to boundary‐value analysis to generate combinations of entities that should be supported by the system. Data flow diagrams are analysed in a way that generates tests to exercise the passage of each data item through the system. This information is augmented with details from the process specifications to ensure, firstly, that the specifications themselves are tested to branch coverage level and secondly, that no infeasible tests are generated. Finally, the ‘entity life histories’ are examined and tests generated to evaluate the full range of possible states experienced by the entities within the system. The result is a common pool of test data requirements and expected results that may be used to test the corresponding development stage (typically, system or acceptance testing) or may be fed into the next development stage as walkthrough or review data. The paper concludes by presenting the results of an initial evaluation of the methods.