Interface-Based Automated Testing for Open Software Architecture

Open Software Architecture (OSA) has been a prevalent design principle for integrating large, complex software systems from components. In OSA, interface specifications provide standard representations of the exposed software functionalities and constraints. Using an industry OSA system, the paper investigates the potential to extract domain model from standard interface specifications and to automate testing following the model driven approach. It focuses on modeling of service external behavior from the syntax and semantics defined by OSA interface standards. The domain model can be translated into test cases, either encoded in XML or specific programming languages, by predefined mapping mechanisms. The generated test scripts can be further compiled with target interfaces and executed under control. In this way, the domain models and test cases can be reused throughout system integration and regression testing, and for testing diversified component implementations following the same interface standards.