An analysis tool for coupling-based integration testing

This research is part of a project to develop practical, effective, formalizable, automatable techniques for integration testing. Integration testing is an important part of the testing process, but few integration testing techniques have been systematically studied or defined. This paper discusses the design and implementation of an analysis tool for measuring the amount of coverage achieved by a set of test data according to a set of previously defined coupling criteria. This tool can be used to support integration testing of software components. The coupling-based testing technique, which has been described elsewhere, is summarized, and coverage algorithms are discussed. The focus of this paper is on the instrumentation techniques and an analysis tool built for Java programs. It was built in Java using the general Java parser JavaCC and the Java Tree Builder (JTB). We are currently using this tool to gather experimental data on the efficacy and the usefulness of the technique.