Participating 
     Organizations 
  Research   
     Topics 
  People 
   

formalWARE 
    results 
 
  Overview 
  Publications 
  Presentation 
  Tools   
  Methods 
  Examples   
  Training 

formalWARE  
  information  

  Events 
  Index  
  Links   
  Contacts

A group of about twenty software engineers learned recently of a software tool that can take care of some of the more tedious testing of Ada code.  Visiting IAMS-Richmond on July 14, Dr. Dan Hoffman of the University of Victoria told how the tool had been developed collaboratively by R&D teams from industry and academia (including IAMS and MDA, and with funding from BC Advanced Systems Institute). 

Called “APE” (Ada Package Exerciser), Dr. Hoffman’s tool automates some aspects of developing Ada code into unit-test packages.  Following specification of test cases in a more concise format than is normally done when writing Ada code directly, APE automatically expands into Ada code a test script that can be compiled and linked with the package being tested. 

Preliminary results, following experimental application of the tool to some CAATS software components in the Apex development environment, indicate that the APE input scripts are much more concise than Ada code written to unit-test a software component, while achieving the same level of test coverage.  As well as the potential for a significant reduction in the amount of effort required to conduct unit testing, this tool is likely to yield greater consistency in the way unit tests are written. 

APE is very similar to a tool developed by Dr. Hoffman and his research associates that proved effective at MRP Teltech in detecting faults before integration testing.  Noting that unit testing is largely ignored by organizations developing software, Dr. Hoffman remarked how impressed he was with its recognition within IAMS and MDA as an important step in the development process. 

Dr. Hoffman welcomes questions and discussion about APE, as well as other aspects of developing and testing software components (see http://csr.uvic.ca/~dhoffman/dhoffman.html).  Dr. Hoffman is also contributing to the development of a technique called “Commonality Analysis” at Lucent Technologies (formerly AT&T) Bell Laboratories, which is used to develop a product line concept for software intensive systems.