A fault-location technique for Java implementations of algebraic specifications

Reviewed by Antónia LopesExecuting comprehensive test suits allows programmers to strengthen the confidence on their software systems. However, given some failed test cases, finding the faults' locations is one of the most expensive and time consuming tasks, thereby any technique that makes it easier for the programmer to locate the faulty components is highly desirable. In this paper we focus on finding faults in object-oriented, more precisely Java, implementations of data types that are described by algebraic specifications. We capitalize on the ConGu and GenT approaches, namely on the models for the specification under study and the corresponding generated JUnit test suits that cover all axioms of the specification, and present a collection of techniques and underlying methodology, that give the programmer a means to find the location of a fault that causes the implementation to violate the specification. We propose Flasji, a stepwise process for finding the faulty method, which is transparent to the programmer, that applies the proposed techniques to find a collection of initial suspect candidates and to subsequently decide the prime suspect among them. We carried out an experiment to evaluate Flasji and obtained very encouraging results