(Click on screenshot to see video)

What is TestStudio

Practice shows that, in spite of on-going research in the field of software testing, methodologies and tools have not yet managed to provide software developers with adequate support for testing activities.

In this project, we suggest a different approach to testing: the testing process is fully automatic. Our methodology is based on Design by Contract (TM). Contracts are a valuable source of information regarding the intended semantics of the software. The information that contracts (preconditions, postconditions, class invariants, loop variants and invariants, and check instructions) provide can be used to check whether the software fulfills its intended purpose. By checking that the software respects its contracts, we can ascertain its validity. Therefore, contracts provide the basis for automation of the testing process.

The goal of this project is to develop an environment for automatic generation of tests, which we call TestStudio. It allows the user to generate, compile and run tests on the push of a button. It also allows fine tuning of the testing process and offers all the benefits of a friendly user interface.

TestStudio is proof of concept for push-button testing. It shows that, in the presence of contracts, a fully automatic testing process is possible. In fact, it is not only possible, but also effective and efficient. By using TestStudio, we discovered several bugs in production-quality libraries.

TestStudio Team

• Ilinca Ciupa
• Andreas Leitner

Download

• Test Studio Preview 1 for Windows
• Test Studio Preview 1 for Linux

Requirements

• ISE Eiffel 5.5

Release Notes

• TestStudio project files have the .tsp extension
• Currently all clusters (groups of Eiffel classes) in the system must have a unique name
• The test output might not be sorted by class
• Test results currently only show whether a test case passed - the input data is not displayed
• The TestStudio source code will be released under an open source license

Publications

• Test Wizard: Automatic test generation based on Design by Contract (master thesis By Nicole Greber)
• TestStudio: An Environment for Automatic Test Generation Based on Design by Contract (diploma thesis by Ilinca Ciupa)
• Strategies to Automatically Test Eiffel Programs (master thesis by Andreas Leitner)

 

Please send feedback to Andreas Leitner.

Last updated: 15 April 2005