Lean Implementations of Software Testing Tools Using XML Representations of Source Codes

By utilizing XML representations of source programs under test, a new approach is proposed to concisely implement some prototypes for TACCLE, a software testing methodology. The conversions between a source program and its XML representation can be easily realized using existing conversion tools. In this way, the conversion tools can automatically analyze and parse the source program, so that testing tool developers only need to concentrate on the manipulation of the XML document. If appropriate XML DOM APIs are chosen, the implementations of such testing tools will be pretty lean. A detailed case study for GMPS tool, a prototype for the TACCLE methodology, is presented to illustrate the new approach.

I. Introduction

When developing different software testing tools, the process of analyzing and parsing the source Program Under Test (referred to as PUT) is repetitive. For instance, when we implemented a series of prototype tools (such as DOE [9] and GMPS [8]) for the software testing methodology TACCLE [4], we also repeated that process. In our previous approaches, we adopted compiling and interpreting techniques for implementation. Although we utilized the object-oriented paradigm to achieve reuse in analysis and parsing, the implementations of these tools were still complex and bulky. Also, the codes for parsing greatly exceeded those for manipulating the source PUT.