Automatic Generation of Test Oracles from Component Based Software Architectures

Abstract

In a software development process, the integration and verification of the different parts of the application under development often require a lot of effort. Component Based Software Engineering (CBSE) approaches help cut software integration costs by enabling the automatic generation of data types, method signatures and middleware configuration from a model of the application structure. Model Based Testing (MBT) techniques help cut software verification costs by enabling the automatic generation of test oracles from a model of the expected application behaviour. Models for CBSE and MBT are usually separate. This may result in discrepancies between them, especially when the application architecture is updated, which always happens. In this paper, we describe how to rely on a single CBSE model to produce both code generation and oracles for some tests, thus ensuring consistency between them. Our work is based on existing OMG standards, mainly UCM and UML.