A taxonomy of OO classes to support the mapping of testing techniques to a class

In this paper we describe a taxonomy of object-oriented classes that catalogs each class in an application according to the characteristics of that class, including the properties of the data attributes and routines as well as the relationships with other classes. Our taxonomy is motivated by the fact that the current research literature contains no formal methodology for capturing the characteristics of a class. To illustrate the advantages of the taxonomy, we apply it to the problem of choosing implementation-based testing techniques and, more importantly, we show that our taxonomy can expose characteristics of a class that remain uncovered by the chosen testing technique.