Home // International Journal On Advances in Systems and Measurements, volume 9, numbers 3 and 4, 2016 // View article

Falsification of Java Assertions Using Automatic Test-Case Generators

Authors:
Rafael Caballero
Manuel Montenegro
Herbert Kuchen
Vincent von Hof

Keywords: assertion; automatic test-case generation; program transformation; inheritance.

Abstract:
We present a technique for the static generation of testcases falsifying Java assertions. Our framework receives as input a Java program including assertions and instruments the code in order to detect whether the assertion conditions are met by every direct and indirect method call within a certain depth level. Then, any automated test-case generator can be used to look for input examples that falsify the conditions. The transformation ensures that the value obtained for the test-case inputs represents a path of method calls that ends with a violation of some assertion. Our technique deals with Java features such as object encapsulation and inheritance, and can be seen has a compromise between the usual but too late detection of an assertion violation at runtime and an often too expensive complete analysis based on a model checker.

Pages: 177 to 187

Copyright: Copyright (c) to authors, 2016. Used with permission.

Publication date: December 31, 2016

Published in: journal

ISSN: 1942-261x