Direct-Indirect Link Matrix: A Black Box Testing Technique for Component-Based Software

Abstract

Testing of software remains a fundamentally significant way to check that software behaves as required. Component-based software testing (CBST) is a crucial activity of component-based software development (CBSD) and is based on two crucial proportions: components testing by developers with the source code (e.g., system testing, integration testing, unit testing, etc.) and components testing by end users without source code (black box testing). This work proposes a black box testing technique that calculates the total number of interactions made by component-based software. This technique is helpful to identify the number of test cases for those components where availability of source code is questionable. On the basis of interaction among components, the authors draw a component-link graph and a direct-indirect-link matrix, which helps to calculate the number of interactions in component-based software.