A software architecture-based testing technique
Zhenyi Jin, A. Jefferson Offutt · 2001
This dissertation defines a formal technique to test software systems at the architectural level, particularly software systems developed using software Architecture Description Languages (ADL). There is a lack of formally defined testing techniques at the architecture level. Formalized software architecture description languages provide a significant opportunity for testing because they precisely describe how the software should behave in high level view, and they can be used by automated tools. The basic theme in this dissertation is that many system architectural problems can be addressed through architecture relations, which are the paths through which architectural components communicate with each other. This dissertation presents a practical, effective, and automatable technique for testing architecture relations at the architecture level. This dissertation also presents a proof-of-concept tool to generate test requirements. An empirical evaluation is carried out to measure the fault finding effectiveness of the architecture-based testing criteria. Results show that this technique is effective at finding faults at the architecture level.