Integration Testing Examples

Integration testing: carrying out integration tests. Integration tests (after leung and white) for procedural languages. This is easily generalized for oo languages by using the equivalent constructs for message passing. In the following, the word "call" is to be understood in the most general sense of a data flow and is not restricted to just formal subroutine calls and returns -- for example, passage of data through global data structures and/or the use of pointers. Let a and b be two components in which a calls b. Let ta be the component level tests of a let tb be the component level tests of b tab the tests in a's suite that cause a to call b. Tbsa the tests in b's suite for which it is possible to sensitize a -- the inputs are to a, not b. Tbsa + tab == the integration test suite (+ = union). Note: sensitize is a technical term. It means inputs that will cause a routine to go down a specified path. The inputs are to a. Not every input to a will cause a to traverse a path in which b is called. Tbsa is the set of tests which do cause a to follow a path in which b is called. The outcome of the test of b may or may not be affected. There have been variations on these definitions, but the key point is that it is pretty darn formal and there's a goodly hunk of testing theory, especially as concerns integration testing, oo testing, and regression testing, based on them.