A complex object data generator specification language to facilitate automated data creation in software component test drivers

The object-oriented programming (OOP) paradigm provides innovative principles and techniques that enhance the process of software specification, design, and implementation. However, OOP does not provide a silver bullet that will allow engineers to always create software components and systems that attain all of the development goals. In this research we report on the component dependability framework and describe and incremental extension that will allow developers to more easily realize their goals. After an introduction to software testability and component dependability, we address the fundamentals of and current solutions to the automated test data generation problem. By combining different data generation techniques we develop a complex object data generation specification language (CODGSL). This language allows a user to easily create complex component data generators that support arbitrary constraints and complete semantic descriptions. These data generators can be incorporated into to the component test drivers that are produced by the Test Driver Generator (TDoG) in order to automatically provide the needed test data. The integration of the CODGSL and TDoG produces a complete system for designing test drivers that can automatically test any arbitrary component written in Java. The augmented version of TDoG could be used to further automate the calculation of dependability of a Java component and thus provides a useful tool for software developers.