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Patterns: from system design to software testing

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Abstract

Design patterns are used extensively in the design of software systems. Patterns codify effective solutions for recurring design problems and allow software engineers to reuse these solutions, tailoring them appropriately to their particular applications, rather than reinventing them from scratch. In this paper, we consider the following question: How can system designers and implementers test whether their systems, as implemented, are faithful to the requirements of the patterns used in their design? A key consideration underlying our work is that the testing approach should enable us, in testing whether a particular pattern P has been correctly implemented in different systems designed using P, to reuse the common parts of this effort rather than having to do it from scratch for each system. Thus in the approach we present, corresponding to each pattern P, there is a set of pattern test case templates (PTCTs). A PTCT codifies a reusable test case structure designed to identify defects associated with applications of P in all systems designed using P. Next we present a process using which, given a system designed using P, the system tester can generate a test suite from the PTCTs for P that can be used to test the particular system for bugs in the implementation of P in that system. This allows the tester to tailor the PTCTs for P to the needs of the particular system by specifying a set of specialization rules that are designed to reflect the scenarios in which the defects codified in this set of PTCTs are likely to manifest themselves in the particular system. We illustrate the approach using the Observer pattern.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Computer Science and Engineering, Ohio State University, Columbus, OH, 43210, USA

    Neelam Soundarajan, Guoqiang Shu & Adem Delibas

  2. School of Computing, Clemson University, Clemson, SC, 29634, USA

    Jason O. Hallstrom

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  1. Neelam Soundarajan
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  2. Jason O. Hallstrom
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  3. Guoqiang Shu
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  4. Adem Delibas
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Correspondence to Neelam Soundarajan.

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Soundarajan, N., Hallstrom, J.O., Shu, G. et al. Patterns: from system design to software testing. Innovations Syst Softw Eng 4, 71–85 (2008). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11334-007-0042-z

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