ABSTRACT

During the testing of context-sensitive middleware-based software, the middleware identifies the current situation and invokes the appropriate functions of the applications. Since the middleware remains active and the situation may continue to evolve, however, the conclusion of some test cases may not be easily identified. Moreover, failures appearing in one situation may be superseded by subsequent correct outcomes and may, therefore, be hidden. We alleviate the above problems by making use of a special kind of situation, which we call checkpoints, such that the middleware will not activate the functions under test. We propose to generate test cases that start at a checkpoint and end at another. We identify functional relations that associate different execution sequences of a test case. Based on a metamorphic approach, we check the results of the test case to detect any contravention of such relations. We illustrate our technique with an example that shows how re-hidden failures may be detected. Keywords: Context-aware application, integration testing, metamorphic testing.

1. This research is supported in part by a grant of the Research Grants Council of Hong Kong (project no. 714504) and a grant of The University of Hong Kong. 2. Department of Computer Science, Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, Clear Water Bay, Hong Kong. Part of the research was done when Chan was with The University of Hong Kong. 3. Centre for Software Analysis and Testing, Swinburne University of Technology, Hawthorn 3122, Australia. 4. Department of Computer Science, The University of Hong Kong, Pokfulam, Hong Kong. 5. (Corresponding author.) Department of Computer Science, The University of Hong Kong, Pokfulam, Hong Kong. Email: 6. Computer Science and Engineering Department, Arizona State University, Tempe, AZ 85287, USA.

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