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Test case generation for object-oriented imperative languages in CLP*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  09 July 2010

MIGUEL GÓMEZ-ZAMALLOA ,
ELVIRA ALBERT  and
GERMÁN PUEBLA
MIGUEL GÓMEZ-ZAMALLOA
Affiliation:
DSIC, Complutense University of Madrid (UCM), E-28040 Madrid, Spain
ELVIRA ALBERT
Affiliation:
DSIC, Complutense University of Madrid (UCM), E-28040 Madrid, Spain
GERMÁN PUEBLA
Affiliation:
DLSIIS, Technical University of Madrid (UPM), E-28660 Boadilla del Monte, Madrid, Spain
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Abstract

Testing is a vital part of the software development process. Test Case Generation (TCG) is the process of automatically generating a collection of test-cases which are applied to a system under test. White-box TCG is usually performed by means of symbolic execution, i.e., instead of executing the program on normal values (e.g., numbers), the program is executed on symbolic values representing arbitrary values. When dealing with an object-oriented (OO) imperative language, symbolic execution becomes challenging as, among other things, it must be able to backtrack, complex heap-allocated data structures should be created during the TCG process and features like inheritance, virtual invocations and exceptions have to be taken into account. Due to its inherent symbolic execution mechanism, we pursue in this paper that Constraint Logic Programming (CLP) has a promising application field in tcg. We will support our claim by developing a fully CLP-based framework to TCG of an OO imperative language, and by assessing it on a corresponding implementation on a set of challenging Java programs.

Keywords

test case generationsymbolic executionconstraint logic programming

Information

Type
Regular Papers
Information
Theory and Practice of Logic Programming , Volume 10 , Special Issue 4-6: 26th International Conference on Logic Programming , July 2010 , pp. 659 - 674
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2010

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