Test case generation, UML, and Eclipse

Abstract

Automatic test case generation has long been on developers' wishlists, and a promising approach to implementing it is the use of state diagrams to describe interactions. The idea is that diagrams can guide the generation of test cases based on the assumption that user activity with the program is modeled by the diagram. The approach we propose in this article is to link requirements expressed in UML format with a test-generation method we call "AQUABUS. To do so, we use UML models stored in an Eclipse project to create a plug-in called "AGAPE" that automatically generates test cases from software specifications based on use cases and activity diagrams. Our approach with AQUABUS is to extend an activity diagram to include information about the use and severity of possible failures for each element as a starting point for the generation of test cases. AQUABUS creates a list of paths from the initial state to the ending one, then ranks them in order of priority using the information about probability of use and cost/severity of possible failures. This approach is in sync with commonly used procedures for generating test cases based on the UI. However, this isn't practical if you can't support some type of tool or automated environment. So in this article, we present a solution that uses Eclipse to develop solutions that integrate UML modeling with test-generation aids.