An empirical study of testing file-system-dependent software with mock objects

Madhuri R. Marri; Tao Xie; Nikolai Tillmann; Jonathan De Halleux; Wolfram Schulte

doi:10.1109/IWAST.2009.5069054

An empirical study of testing file-system-dependent software with mock objects

Madhuri R. Marri, Tao Xie, Nikolai Tillmann, Jonathan De Halleux, Wolfram Schulte

Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceeding › Conference contribution

Abstract

Unit testing is a technique of testing a single unit of a program in isolation. The testability of the unit under test can be reduced when the unit interacts with its environment. The construction of high-covering unit tests and their execution require appropriate interactions with the environment such as a file system or database. To help set up the required environment, developers can use mock objects to simulate the behavior of the environment. In this paper, we present an empirical study to analyze the use of mock objects to test file-system-dependent software. We use a mock object of the FileSystem API provided with the Pex automatic testing tool in our study. We share our insights gained on the benefits of using mock objects in unit testing and discuss the faced challenges.

Original language	English (US)
Title of host publication	Proceedings of the 2009 ICSE Workshop on Automation of Software Test, AST 2009
Pages	149-153
Number of pages	5
DOIs	https://doi.org/10.1109/IWAST.2009.5069054
State	Published - 2009
Externally published	Yes
Event	2009 ICSE Workshop on Automation of Software Test, AST 2009 - Vancouver, BC, Canada Duration: May 16 2009 → May 24 2009

Publication series

Name	Proceedings of the 2009 ICSE Workshop on Automation of Software Test, AST 2009

Other

Other	2009 ICSE Workshop on Automation of Software Test, AST 2009
Country/Territory	Canada
City	Vancouver, BC
Period	5/16/09 → 5/24/09

ASJC Scopus subject areas

Software

Online availability

10.1109/IWAST.2009.5069054

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Marri, M. R., Xie, T., Tillmann, N., De Halleux, J., & Schulte, W. (2009). An empirical study of testing file-system-dependent software with mock objects. In Proceedings of the 2009 ICSE Workshop on Automation of Software Test, AST 2009 (pp. 149-153). Article 5069054 (Proceedings of the 2009 ICSE Workshop on Automation of Software Test, AST 2009). https://doi.org/10.1109/IWAST.2009.5069054

An empirical study of testing file-system-dependent software with mock objects. / Marri, Madhuri R.; Xie, Tao; Tillmann, Nikolai et al.
Proceedings of the 2009 ICSE Workshop on Automation of Software Test, AST 2009. 2009. p. 149-153 5069054 (Proceedings of the 2009 ICSE Workshop on Automation of Software Test, AST 2009).

Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceeding › Conference contribution

Marri, MR, Xie, T, Tillmann, N, De Halleux, J & Schulte, W 2009, An empirical study of testing file-system-dependent software with mock objects. in Proceedings of the 2009 ICSE Workshop on Automation of Software Test, AST 2009., 5069054, Proceedings of the 2009 ICSE Workshop on Automation of Software Test, AST 2009, pp. 149-153, 2009 ICSE Workshop on Automation of Software Test, AST 2009, Vancouver, BC, Canada, 5/16/09. https://doi.org/10.1109/IWAST.2009.5069054

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An empirical study of testing file-system-dependent software with mock objects

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