E-Tester: a contract-aware and agent-based unit testing framework for Eiffel

Jonathan S.  Ostroff; Richard F. Paige; David Makalsky; Phillip J.  Brooke

E-Tester: a contract-aware and agent-based unit testing framework for Eiffel

Jonathan S. Ostroff, Richard F. Paige, David Makalsky, Phillip J. Brooke

School of Computing, Engineering & Digital Technologies

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Abstract

We describe a contract-aware unit testing framework, E-Tester, for the Eiffel programming language. The framework differs from JUnit in its first-class support for lightweight formal methods, through test support for contracts and assertions. As well, it supports a form of negative test, called violation cases, which aim at validating contracts. It also differs based on its use of agents for expressing tests and test cases. We compare E-Tester with JUnit and suggest several advantages it offers, with the additional aim of making recommendations for improving JUnit’s support for testing software with contracts. We also explain how it can be applied within a test-driven process for building reliable systems.

Original language	English
Pages (from-to)	97-114
Journal	Journal of Object Technology
Volume	4
Issue number	7
Publication status	Published - Sept 2005

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title = "E-Tester: a contract-aware and agent-based unit testing framework for Eiffel",

abstract = "We describe a contract-aware unit testing framework, E-Tester, for the Eiffel programming language. The framework differs from JUnit in its first-class support for lightweight formal methods, through test support for contracts and assertions. As well, it supports a form of negative test, called violation cases, which aim at validating contracts. It also differs based on its use of agents for expressing tests and test cases. We compare E-Tester with JUnit and suggest several advantages it offers, with the additional aim of making recommendations for improving JUnit{\textquoteright}s support for testing software with contracts. We also explain how it can be applied within a test-driven process for building reliable systems.",

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AU - Paige, Richard F.

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N2 - We describe a contract-aware unit testing framework, E-Tester, for the Eiffel programming language. The framework differs from JUnit in its first-class support for lightweight formal methods, through test support for contracts and assertions. As well, it supports a form of negative test, called violation cases, which aim at validating contracts. It also differs based on its use of agents for expressing tests and test cases. We compare E-Tester with JUnit and suggest several advantages it offers, with the additional aim of making recommendations for improving JUnit’s support for testing software with contracts. We also explain how it can be applied within a test-driven process for building reliable systems.

AB - We describe a contract-aware unit testing framework, E-Tester, for the Eiffel programming language. The framework differs from JUnit in its first-class support for lightweight formal methods, through test support for contracts and assertions. As well, it supports a form of negative test, called violation cases, which aim at validating contracts. It also differs based on its use of agents for expressing tests and test cases. We compare E-Tester with JUnit and suggest several advantages it offers, with the additional aim of making recommendations for improving JUnit’s support for testing software with contracts. We also explain how it can be applied within a test-driven process for building reliable systems.

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E-Tester: a contract-aware and agent-based unit testing framework for Eiffel

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