Employing data flow testing on object-oriented classes

At the class testing level, state-based testing and data flow testing techniques have been employed. However, while the former only involves the variables that have an effect on the behaviour of the object under test, it is possible for errors to occur in variables, which do not define an object’s state. Data flow testing has been applied to generate test cases for testing classes using data flow criteria, but this is a difficult task. Moreover, some of data flow test cases thus generated may be unworkable. Selecting data flow test cases based on sequences of specification messages is a way to reduce the effort of generating feasible intra-class data flow test cases. However, some test cases cannot be selected, if data flow anomalies exist within the sequences. The data flow testing technique in this research is divided into two stages; first detecting data flow anomalies and then computing data flow test cases.