Investigating Java type analyses for the receiver-classes testing criterion

This paper investigates the precision of three linear-complexity type analyses for Java software: Class Hierarchy Analysis (CHA), Rapid Type Analysis (RTA) and Variable Type Analysis (VTA). Precision is measured relative to class targets. Class targets results are useful in the context of the receiver-classes criterion, which is an object-oriented testing strategy that aims to exercise every possible class binding of the receiver object reference at each dynamic call site. In this context, using a more precise analysis decreases the number of infeasible bindings to cover, thus it reduces the time spent on conceiving test data sets. This paper also introduces two novel variations to VTA, called the iteration and intersection variants. We present experimental results about the precision of CHA, RTA and VTA on a set of 17 Java programs, corresponding to a total of 600 kLOC of source code. Results show that, on average, RTA suggests 13% less bindings than CHA, standard VTA suggests 23% less bindings than CHAt and VTA with the two variations together suggests 32% less bindings than CHA.