Program Analysis and Testing of Database Applications

During the last decades database applications are undoubtedly among the most widely used types of software applications. The presence of database statements in their source code is one of their typical characteristics that however introduces many difficulties in their code-level analysis and testing. This paper describes an approach that resolves such issues and facilitates the employment of traditional software testing techniques. The approach involves two alternative methods and is founded on the execution plan that the underlying database management system derives for each SQL statement. To support this approach a prototype tool called DATeM has been developed and the experimental results from its usage are reported and analyzed