A scheme to aid construction of left-hand sides of axioms in algebraic specifications for object-oriented program testing

In order to ensure reliability and quality, software systems must be tested. Testing object-oriented software is harder than testing procedure-oriented software. It involves four levels, namely the algorithmic level, class level, cluster level, and system level. We proposed a methodology TACCLE for class-and cluster- level testing. It includes an important algorithm GFT for generating fundamental equivalent pairs as class-level test cases based on axioms in a given algebraic specification for a given class. This formal methodology has many benefits. However, system analysts often find it difficult to construct axioms for algebraic specifications. In this paper, we propose a scheme to aid the construction of the left-hand sides of axioms. The scheme alleviates the difficulties of the system analysts and also helps them check the completeness, consistency, and independence of the axiom system. © 2008 IEEE.published_or_final_versionUnion Grant of Guangdong Province and National Natural Science Foundation of China (#U0775001), Guangdong Province Science Foundation (#7010116), and by a grant of the Youth Science Foundation of Jinan University (#51208035)