Contextual Integration Testing of Object-Oriented and Aspect-Oriented Programs: A Structural Approach for Java and AspectJ

Abstract

Aspect-oriented programming (AOP) is a technology that aims to tackle software modularisation problems. Despite the benefits that may be achieved with AOP, its mechanisms represent new potential source of faults that should be handled during the test phase. In this paper a structural integration testing approach for Object-Oriented (OO) and Aspect-Oriented (AO) programs with a configurable integration depth (d) is presented. A model called CoDU (Contextual Def-Use) graph to represent the control flow and data flow between units is proposed. Based on the CoDU, a family of testing criteria is defined: all-i-nodes-Nd (control flow based), all-i-edges-Nd (control flow based), and all-i-uses-Nd (data flow based). We also present the implementation of our approach as an extension to the Java Bytecode Understanding and Testing (JaBUTi) family of testing tools along with an example of usage. The example and an exploratory study involving 8 OO and AO programs present evidence of the effectiveness and feasibility of the proposed approach.