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Code Based Analysis for Object-Oriented Systems

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Abstract

The basic features of object-oriented software makes it difficult to apply traditional testing methods in object-oriented systems. Control Flow Graph (CFG) is a well-known model used for identification of independent paths in procedural software. This paper highlights the problem of constructing CFG in object-oriented systems and proposes a new model named Extended Control Flow Graph (ECFG) for code based analysis of Object-Oriented (OO) software. ECFG is a layered CFG where nodes refer to methods rather than statements. A new metrics— Extended Cyclomatic Complexity (E-CC) is developed which is analogous to McCabe’s Cyclomatic Complexity (CC) and refers to the number of independent execution paths within the OO software. The different ways in which CFG’s of individual methods are connected in an ECFG are presented and formulas for E-CC for these different cases are proposed. Finally we have considered an example in Java and based on its ECFG, applied these cases to arrive at the E-CC of the total system as well as proposed a methodology for calculating the basis set, i.e., the set of independent paths for the OO system that will help in creation of test cases for code testing.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Computer Science and Engineering, Jadavpur University, Kolkata, 700032, India

    Swapan Bhattacharya

  2. Department of Information Technology, B. P. Poddar Institute of Management and Technology, Kolkata, 700052, India

    Ananya Kanjilal

Authors
  1. Swapan Bhattacharya
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  2. Ananya Kanjilal
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Swapan Bhattacharya.

Additional information

This research work has been partially supported by the project entitled “Design and Development of Domain Specific Evolutionary Prototypes” sponsored by All India Council for Technical Education vide Grant No. 8022/RID/NPROJ/RPS-110 of 2003-04.

Swapan Bhattacharya is presently a faculty member in the Department of Computer Science & Engg., Jadavpur University, Kolkata, India. He received his Ph.D. degree in computer science in 1991 from University of Calcutta, India. His areas of research interests are distributed computing and software engineering. He received Young Scientist Award from UNESCO in 1989. As a Sr. Research Associate of National Research Council, USA, he had also served as the coordinator of Ph.D. program in Software Engg. in Naval Postgraduate School, Monterey, CA during 1999–2001. He has published about 100 research papers in various international platforms. He is also actively involved in organizing international conferences on software engineering and distributed computing. He may be reached at bswapan2000@yahoo.co.in.

Ananya Kanjilal is presently a faculty member in the Department of Information Technology, B.P. Poddar Institute of Managmement & Technology affiliated to West Bengal University of Technology, Kolkata, India. She is pursuing Ph.D. degree under the supervision of Professor Swapan Bhattacharya from Jadavpur University, India. Her areas of research interests are Object Oriented Systems and Software Engineering. Her total number of publication in various international platforms is 5. She may be reached at ag_k@rediffmail.com.

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Bhattacharya, S., Kanjilal, A. Code Based Analysis for Object-Oriented Systems. J Comput Sci Technol 21, 965–972 (2006). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11390-006-0965-0

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11390-006-0965-0

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