Substra: a framework for automatic generation of integration tests

A component-based software system consists of well-encapsulated components that interact with each other via their interfaces. Software integration tests are generated to test the interactions among different components. These tests are usually in the form of sequences of interface method calls. Although many components are equipped with documents that provide informal specifications of individual interface methods, few documents specify component interaction constraints on the usage of these interface methods, including the order in which these methods should be called and the constraints on the method arguments and returns across multiple methods. In this paper, we propose Substra, a framework for automatic generation of software integration tests based on call-sequence constraints inferred from initial-test executions or normal runs of the subsystem under test. Two types of sequencing constraints are inferred: shared subsystem states and object define-use relationships. The inferred constraints are used to guide automatic generation of integration tests. We have implemented Substra with a tool and applied the tool on an ATM example. The preliminary results show that the tool can effectively generate integration tests that exercise new program behaviors.