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Automatic identification of input values that expose output failures in a software object

  • US 7,237,231 B2
  • Filed: 03/10/2003
  • Issued: 06/26/2007
  • Est. Priority Date: 03/10/2003
  • Status: Expired due to Fees
First Claim
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1. In a computer system that is capable of executing a software object, a method for testing the software object to expose failures in the functionality of the software object, the method comprising the following:

  • an act of inspecting a binary version of a test case template that includes an object that is to be tested for intended behavior, the inspection to identify annotations annotating one or more individual input fields that are part of the object, the annotations representing applied attributes applied on a per field basis to individually constrain how corresponding values for each individual input field are to be varied, from among a range of available values based on the input field data type, when generating test cases for testing the object for the intended behavior such that test cases can be generated through reference to the annotations;

    an act of automatically generating a plurality of test cases for testing the object for the intended behavior, each test case including a value for each of the one or more individual input fields, the combination of values for each test case constrained in accordance with the applied attributes represented in the annotations to the one or more individual input fields of the object;

    an act of invoking the object using the values of the one or more input fields specified in the at least one generated test case to attempt to cause the object to exhibit the intended behavior;

    an act of accessing execution data for the object for each of the at least one test cases, the execution data indicating whether or not the intended behavior was exhibited for the test case;

    an act of identifying test cases that did not cause the intended behavior to be exhibited as failed test cases;

    an act of recording input values for the one or more input fields for any failed test cases on physical storage media; and

    wherein the act of automatically generating a plurality of test cases comprises;

    an act of automatically converting the binary test input to text-based test input comprising an act of serializing the binary test input into XML instructions;

    an act of automatically generating a plurality of text-based test cases from the text-based test input;

    an act of automatically converting at least the automatically generated plurality of text-based test cases into a corresponding plurality of binary test cases representative of the constraints in the binary test input comprising an act of deserializing XML instructions into binary test cases.

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