Constructing a reproducible testing environment for distributed Java applications

Abstract

Executions with internal nondeterministic choices make the testing procedure non-repeatable. A natural solution is to artificially enforce and direct the execution to take the desired path so that a test can be reproduced. With geographically distributed processes and heterogeneous platform architectures, distributed systems have raised new dimensions of challenges to develop effective techniques for the reproducible testing. In this paper, we discuss the architectural and design issues on constructing an environment to automate such a testing for distributed Java applications. Our focus is on controlling the order of input and remote call events in the application under test during the test procedure. The testing environment is by itself distributed and does not require code intrusion.