Built-in Regression Testing for Component-based Software Systems

Some specialties of component, such as high evolvability, implementation transparent, and limited access support, bring a great challenge for testing the systems built by externally-provided components, especially for regression testing. Built-in test design is a fairly effective way to improve component´s testability. In this paper, we present a built-in regression testing method to validate the change and its impact of component-based software, which needs the mutual collaboration between the component developers and component users. Through employing preliminary experiments on some medium scale systems, our regression testing method based on built-in test design has been proven to be feasible and practical. Although our method indicates the same precision as Orso et al. ´s method at statement level, it needs less exchanged information (i.e., meta-data) and test scripts, so it is more cost-effective.