| Publication Title: |
Automatic Test Factoring for Java |
| Publication Author: |
Saff, David |
| Additional Authors: |
Shay Artzi, Jeff H. Perkins, Michael D. Ernst |
| LCS Document Number: |
MIT-LCS-TR-991 |
| Publication Date: |
6-8-2005 |
| LCS Group: |
Program Analysis |
| Additional URL: |
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| Abstract: |
| Test factoring creates fast, focused unit tests from slow system-wide
tests; each new unit test exercises only a subset of the functionality
exercised by the system test. Augmenting a test suite with factored
unit tests should catch errors earlier in a test run.
One way to factor a test is to introduce 'mock' objects. If a test
exercises a component T, which interacts with another component E (the
'environment'), the implementation of E can be replaced by a mock.
The mock checks that T's calls to E are as expected, and it simulates
E's behavior in response. We introduce an automatic technique for
test factoring. Given a system test for T and E, and a record of T's
and E's behavior when the system test is run, test factoring generates
unit tests for T in which E is mocked. The factored tests can isolate
bugs in T from bugs in E and, if E is slow or expensive, improve test
performance or cost.
We have built an implementation of automatic dynamic test factoring for the
Java language. Our experimental data indicates that it can reduce the
running time of a system test suite by up to an order of magnitude. |
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