Building Trust into OO Components Using a Genetic Analogy

Despite the growing interest for component-based systems, few works tackle the question of the trust we can bring into a component. This paper presents a method and a tool for building trustable OO components. It is particularly adapted to a design-by-contract approach, where the specification is systematically derived into executable assertions (invariant properties, pre/postconditions of methods). A component is seen as an organic set composed of a specification, a given implementation and its embedded test cases. We propose an adaptation of mutation analysis to the OO paradigm that checks the consistency between specification/implementation and tests. Faulty programs, called "mutants", are generated by systematic fault injection in the implementation. The quality of tests is related to the mutation score, i.e. the proportion of faulty programs it detects. The main contribution of this is to show how a similar idea can be used in the same context to address the problem of ...

• Type: Conference
• Year: 2000
• Where: ISSRE
• Authors: Benoit Baudry, Vu Le Hanh, Jean-Marc Jézéquel, Yves Le Traon
• Keywords: Faulty Programs, ISSRE 2000, Software Engineering, Test Cases, Test Optimization