A User-Oriented Framework for Component Deployment Testing

Summary

The capability to test an externally acquired software component deployed within the target application environment can help establish the compliance of a candidate component to the customer’s expectations, and helps “increase trust.” To this end, in this chapter we introduce the CDT framework that is conceived to ease the planning and the execution of test suites by the component user. We discuss the main challenges raised by the new component-based software production methodology and how the proposed framework can facilitate the evaluation of candidate components. Notably, CDT permits codifying a component deployment test suite in the early stages of development without reference to any (yet unknown) real implementation, and, later, during the integration stage, adapting and executing the test suite on a found candidate component.