A testing assistant for object-oriented programs

Within the last decade, the object-oriented approach to software development has become widely used. The features that make object-oriented software appealing are features that also cause complexity in the testing process. Inheritance is the characteristic that most distinguishes object-oriented languages from traditional imperative languages; however, its use makes the testing of the programs challenging. Testing the inherited features is clearly crucial; however, the testing process can easily become very complex if features in the child classes are unnecessarily tested. In this paper, we present a testing assistant, Object-Oriented Testing Assistant (OOTA), that facilitates the testing of object-oriented code by incorporating procedures to support object level testing and inheritance testing. OOTA provides a framework that helps to ensure that appropriate components and interactions are tested by generating code segments that drive the testing process. OOTA was developed and tested using the object-oriented paradigm