Integration testing object-oriented software systems: An experiment-driven research approach

Any incremental class testing approach has to answer the two following questions: What integration process, indicating in which order classes are (integration) tested, should be selected? Which test design techniques should be applied to unit and integration test classes? Although there is a fairly large number of reported works on both questions, much remains to be done. On the one hand, class unit/integration testing techniques have mostly been described without any consideration for any integration process. On the other hand, integration processes have been suggested without much consideration for how they could be used in practice, along with class unit/integration testing techniques. There is a lack of research and practical results on how a class integration process can be used to conduct class unit/integration testing. This paper summarizes the problem and suggests an experiment-driven research approach to solve it.