Automatic Testing of Financial Charting Software Component: A Case Study on Point and Figure Chart
Kwan Yong Sim, C. S. Low, Fei‐Ching Kuo · 2009
Financial charting software is widely used for technical analysis of price movements in financial markets. Commercial off-the-shelf charting components are often used to build such software. However, the outputs of some charting components are difficult to be verified because the correct outputs are unknown. In many cases, charting output verification relies on subjective visual judgement and manual construction of the chart by the testers, which are prone to human errors. Hence, the charting components could be poorly tested before being integrated into software. In this paper, we perform a study on the Point and Figure charting component and propose an automatic testing techniqure that is built upon the notions of assertion checking and metamorphic testing to alleviate these problems. Experiments on pre-release builds of Nextwave Software Point and Figure charting component show that this automatic testing technique has successfully detected real faults in the charting component tested.