Fujistu Develops a New Methodology to Limit Excessive Test Work in Agile Software Development

Fujistu laboratories announced the development of automatic test generation technologies in order to limit the excessive testing work and enhance efficiencies for agile software development. This is an evolutionary approach towards software development which incrementally adds small scale functions, and made sure to add one after the other, makes them available.

Automatic test-generation, analyze source code and generate a new test case to thoroughly test software. In the agile development approach, frequent, repeated changes to the source code results in a large number of test cases and excessive testing work. Fujistu laboratories now developed automatic test generation technologies that can efficiently search for variables in the source code that are impacting the sections of code where new software features are added, and locally revise and add to portions of the tests at the variable level.

In a trial applied to the existing technologies to revise the open source software with approximate of five thousand lines of source code, Fujistu laboratories even confirmed that it was possible to reduce the increase in test code of about 1/24^th of previous levels. This will enable the efficiencies in test automation, which was a great hurdle to apply in the agile development. It also helps to reduce in testing time caused by repeatedly adding functions in a brief period, thereby shortening overall development times.

Issues

When source code enhancements are made with conventional test generation technology, there may be cases that previously available test cases cannot be used to test the enhancement. In that case, it is necessary to build and add a new test case becomes excessive, and tasks such as handling test cases, checking test results, and test case maintenance become a problem.

The above picture shows the clear workflow of new methodology, automatic test generation in order to limit the excessive testing work.

Key highlights on new features on the model

Now, by efficiently analyzing the relationships between input variable and the revised section of source code, so that code can be reused at the variable input level, Fujistu laboratories have developed automatic test generation technologies that limit the increase in the number of test cases due to revision in source code.

Technology that re-uses the test code at variable input level.
Technology to efficiently find the input variables related to different line of a source code.

Effects: – In a trial this technology to revision of the open source software of approx. of five thousand lines, it reduced to increase in the test code to 1/24^th of its previous levels. With this technology, it is possible to use automatic test-generation technology with agile development, shortening development times.

Fujistu laboratories even decided to enhance their technology through internal trails, aiming for commercialization in the financial year 2016.