Automated Test Case Generation for Polymorphic Call-Sites

Abstract

Object-oriented feature polymorphism poses difficulty in testing the object-oriented software. The dynamic binding allows the target of a call to be decided at runtime, and makes impossible to identify the target of the call during compile-time. So, test cases are needed for each possible method binding of polymorphic call-site. A new technique has been proposed to test polymorphic call-sites in object-oriented software. It considers only those method bindings of a polymorphic call-site whose definition sets are different. As a result, the number of test cases for testing polymorphism has been reduced. In addition, the proposed technique is based on system dependence graph, which includes both control and data dependence. With this representation, both testers and developers of object-oriented programs can better understand the polymorphic interactions within the software. A prototype GUI-based tool has been implemented. The result obtained by using the tool demonstrates the effectiveness of the proposed technique.