Automatic Generation of Basis Component Path Coverage for Software Architecture Testing

Architecture-centric development is one of the most promising methods for improving software quality, reducing software cost and raising software productivity. Software architecture research not only focuses on the design phase, but also covers every phase of software life cycle. Software architecture has characteristics different from traditional software, conventional testing methods do not apply directly to software architecture. Basis path testing is a very simple and efficient white-box testing method. Traditional methods generate basis path according to the control flow graph, they are not suitable for generating component path when we detect more software architecture errors. This paper presents a new concept - Basis Component Path (BCP) for C2-style architecture, and proposes a method to generate the BCPs. C2-style architecture is represented by components, connectors, and interfaces, and uses an architecture component interaction graph (CIG) to describe interface connection relationship. We also provide an algorithm to generate BCP set. Experiments apply the proposed method in a typical C2-style architecture and the result shows that the proposed method can generate BCP set which contains as many BCPs as possible efficiently, and it meets the requirements of the basis component path testing.