Testing Adaptive Software During Class Evolution

Class evolution has significant impact on program maintenance and testing. Changes in class structure require maintenance of existing class methods, which must then be retested. Existing test cases can not simply be rerun, since the test cases may no longer be consistent with the class structure. The benefit of reuse is reduced if generic software requires testing to start from scratch each time a component is reused. Adaptive software components are designed to be flexible to changes in class structure, allowing reuse with many class designs. This paper presents an incremental approach to testing adaptive software during class evolution. Paper Category: Research Topic Area: Object Testing and Metrics, Templates and Generic Programming 1 Introduction Object-oriented software engineering is being increasingly used for system development, primarily due to advantages gained from the production of reusable components. While reuse is an assumed benefit, it is vital that a component be w..