Dataflow Approach to Testing Java Programs

Code based (ldquowhite boxrdquo) approach to testing can be divided into two main types: control flow coverage and data flow coverage methods. Dataflow testing was introduced for structural programming languages and later adopted for object languages. Among many tools supporting code based testing of object programs, only JaBUTi and DFC (data flow coverage) support dataflow testing of Java programs. DFC is a tool implemented at the Institute of Computer Science Warsaw University of Technology as an Eclipse plug-in. The objective of this paper is to present dataflow coverage testing of Java programs supported by DFC. DFC finds all definition-uses pairs in tested unit and provides also the definition-uses graph for methods. After the execution of test information which def-uses pairs were covered is shown. An example of data flow testing of Java program is also presented.