Testing with OO

1. Testing with OO • OO has several key concepts: • Class & object instantiation • Encapsulation • Inheritance and reuse • Polymorphism and late (dynamic) binding • Are there special concerns when we test software developed under OO methodologies?

2. Class and Object instantiation • There are at least two concerns: • Should we view Class as a fundamental unit and test it as an independent entity by itself? • What and how much “scaffolding” code do we need to write to invoke and test this Class. • e.g. Class1 x1; - - - - • If there is a large method inside the Class and we know (via whitebox testing approach) that the method invokes other methods in other Classes, should we follow (test) the thread of methods across different Classes?

3. Encapsulation • Both data and methods may be encapsulated and protected. Depending on the programming language used there may be slight differences in implementing the encapsulation mechanism: • Public (visible) • Private (hidden) • Protected (secret) • Test the access of encapsulated data • Test the access of encapsulated methods

4. Inheritance • Inheritance provides us with the ability to reuse (and save bothimplementation and testing expenses) what is there and make incremental changes by creating a subclass by either adding to or modifying the : • Instance variable • Methods • One may want to test subclass access of the “encapsulated” data or methods in the super-class. • One may want to test the methods in the inherited class which were previously tested in the super-class. • An example is a method, m1, that only returns positive integers and is used in another method, m2, as a divisor. An inherited subclass modifies m1 to allow all integers, including zero. (We will need to ensure that the inherited and previously tested m2 is retested). • Do we need to test multiple inheritance, where there may be conflicts in inheritance? • Two subclasses, Sub1 and Sub2, are inherited from a super-class, S1, and they both modify the method, m1, but differently. If we further inherit from both Sub1 and Sub2, what should we expect m1 to be like?

5. Polymorphism and Late Binding • Polymorphism and late binding is a special feature that allows us to have multiple behavior based on which class a statement is bound to. e.g. in C++ Class Cube{ protected: float length; public: virtual float area( ) {return (length* length);} // area of square void set_length(float z) {length = z} // set passed parameter, length void volume( ) {cout<< “volume is” << area( ) * length;} // the area( ) method is not bound }; Class Cylinder: public Cube { virtual float area( ) {return (3.14* length**2);} // area of circle } . . Cube c1, Cylinder cyl1; . c1.volume( ); // give us the volume of cube cyl1.volume( ); // give us the volume of circle • Both classes must be tested, especially if one of them is a division by length.