An Approach to Reliable Integration Testing

摘要

A testing strategy which involves integrating a previously validated module into a software system is described. It is shown that, when doing the integration testing, it is not enough to treat the previously validated module as a 'black box', for otherwise certain integration errors may go undetected. For example, an error in the calling program may cause an error in the module's input which will only result in an error in the module's output along certain paths through the module. The results indicate that such errors can be detected by the module by retesting a set of paths whose cardinality depends only on the dimensionality of the module's input space, rather than on the module's path complexity. (Author)