Integrating White- and Black-box Techniques for Class-level Testing Object-oriented Prototypes∗

An important activity in software development is the testing of developed software using the appropriate techniques. Obviously, these techniques have to take into account the type of the software process and the type of the developed software. This article proposes a technique for testing classes developed during a special type of software process, namely object-oriented prototyping. Furthermore, the technique developed is suited for application domains requiring a high degree of quality of the deployed software. The main idea of our approach is to interpret each prototyping iteration as a correction of the software, similar to corrections taken during the maintenance phase. With this interpretation in mind, we tried to adopt regression testing techniques for testing prototype classes. Unfortunately, all regression testing techniques we have studied have some shortcomings limiting their applicability to testing prototypes. Therefore, we have developed a new technique that integrates two existing techniques resulting in one which can be used for both whiteand black-box testing.