Arcadia Papers: ABSTRACT
``TAOS: Testing with Analysis and Oracle Support,''
by D. J. Richardson in
Proceeding of the International Symposium on Software Testing and Analysis (I
SSTA) , Boston, June 1994.
Abstract
Few would question that software testing is a necessary activity for
assuring software quality, yet the typical testing process is a human
intensive activity and as such, it is unproductive, error-prone,
and often inadequately done. Moreover, testing is seldom given a
prominent place in software development or maintenance processes,
nor is it an integral part of them. Major productivity and quality
enhancements can be achieved by automating the testing process through
tool development and use and effectively incorporating it with development
and maintenance processes.
The TAOS toolkit, Testing with Analysis and Oracle Support, provides
support for the testing process. It includes tools that automate many
tasks in the testing process, including management and persistence of
test artifacts and the relationships between those artifacts, test
development, test execution, and test measurement. A unique aspect of
TAOS is its support for test oracles and their use to verify behavioral
correctness of test executions. TAOS also supports structural/dependence
coverage by measuring the adequacy of test criteria coverage and regression
testing by identifying tests associated or dependent upon modified software
artifacts. This is accomplished by integrating the ProDAG toolset,
Program Dependence Analysis Graph, with TAOS. The combination of ProDAG
and TAOS supports the use of program dependence analysis in testing,
debugging, and maintenance.
This paper describes the TAOS toolkit and its capabilities as well as
testing, debugging and maintenance processes based on program dependence
analysis. We also describe our experience with the toolkit and discuss
our future plans.
The Arcadia Project
<arcadia-www@ics.uci.edu>
Last modified: Fri Nov 11 14:43:50 1994