What is Special About Object-Oriented Testing?

Object-oriented software is developed as a set of objects that substantially model a problem and then co-operate to affect a solution to it.

The great benefit of this design approach is that analytical models directly map to project models and those in turn map to program code. Therefore, you can start testing at the stage of analysis and improve the tests executed in analysis phase to tests for design. Also, design testing is improved to implementation testing. This means that the testing process can be intertwined with the development process. There are three significant benefits to testing program analysis and design models:

1. Test cases can be identified earlier during the process, even when the requirements are being elicited and gathered. Early testing allows designers and analysts to much better understand and clearly formulate requirements and make these requirements “testable”.

1. Software errors can be detected in the early stages of the development process, thereby saving money, time and effort. It is widely known that the earlier a problem is identified, the easier and cheaper it is to fix.

1. Test cases can be checked for correctness in the early stages of the project. The correctness of test cases, especially system test cases, is always a problem. If the test cases are identified in advance and applied to the models at the early stage of the project, then all misunderstandings of the requirements on the part of the testers can be corrected at an early stage. In other words, testing models allows you to ensure that testers and developers have full and consistent understanding of system requirements.

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Despite the fact that testing models is extremely beneficial, it is very important not to let their testing become an end in itself. Code testing is still an important part of the software testing process.

Another distinction between traditional projects and projects employing object-oriented technologies relates to objectives of the software. Suppose, for example, that a new important goal in many organizations is the production of reusable software, expandable systems and even object-oriented structures representing reusable projects. Testing can (and should) help to identify their inability to meet these goals. Traditional approaches to testing and methods do not satisfy these objectives.