Software reuse and the test development process: A combined approach

Testing is the most time consuming activity in the software development process. The effectiveness of software testing is primarily determined by the quality of the testing process. Software reuse, when effectively applied, has shown to increase the productivity of a software process and enhance the quality of software by the use of components already tested on a large scale. While reusability of testing material and tests has a strong potential, few if any approaches have been proposed that combine these two aspects. Reusability of testing materials is desired, when test development is complex and time-consuming. This is the case, for example, in testing with test-specific languages, such as the TTCN-3. To meet these needs, this paper suggests a test development process model that takes software reuse techniques and activities into account. This paper shows further that in order to produce reusable test material, the software entities must be expressed in terms of features, in which the test materials are attached to. Also, the software components must be designed with reuse in mind when reusable test material is desired. The scope of the proposed test development approach is on the unit and integration testing, because the outcome of higher levels of testing is typically dependent on the testers subjective judgment.