System testing for object-oriented frameworks using hook technology

An application framework provides a reusable design and implementation for a family of software systems. If the framework contains defects, the defects will be passed on to the applications developed from the framework. Framework defects are hard to discover at the time the framework is instantiated. Therefore, it is important to remove all defects before instantiating the framework. The problem addressed in this paper is developing an automated state-based test suite generator technique that uses hook technology to produce test suites to test frameworks at the system level. A case study is reported and its results show that the proposed technique is reasonably effective at detecting faults. A supporting tool that automatically produces framework test cases, executes them, and evaluates the results is presented.