Incremental Class Testing from a Class Test Order

Abstract

Many approaches exist to decide the order in which classes should be integrated during (integration) testing. Most of them, based on an analysis of class dependencies (for instance described in a UML class diagram) aim at producing a partial order indicating which classes should be tested in sequence and which ones can be tested in parallel. We argue in this article that, thanks to the specifics of such a class test order, it is possible to define an incremental strategy for testing classes that promotes reuse during testing, not only along class inheritance hierarchies.