A scheme for dynamic detection of concurrent execution of object-oriented software

Program testing is the most widely adopted approach for assuring the quality and reliability of software systems. Despite the popularity of the objected-oriented programs, its testing is much more challenging than that of the conventional programs. We proposed previously a methodology known as TACCLE for testing object-oriented software. It has not, however, addressed the aspects of concurrency and non-determinism. In this paper, we propose a scheme for dynamically detecting and testing concurrency in object-oriented software by executing selected concurrent pairs of operations. The scheme is based on OBJSA nets and addresses concurrency and nondeterminism problems. An experimental case study is reported to show the effectiveness of the scheme in detecting deadlocks, race conditions and other coherence problems. The scheme supplements our previous static approach to detecting deadlock in Java multithreaded programs.

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