Automation component aspects for efficient unit testing

TLDR

Automation systems software must provide sufficient diagnosis information for testing to enable early defect detection and quality measurement, but in many systems the aspects of automation, testing, and diagnosis are intertwined, making the code harder to read, modify, and test. The study introduces a test‑driven automation (TDA) component that separates automation, diagnosis, and testing aspects to improve testability and test efficiency. The authors design the TDA component and demonstrate its use with a prototype that allows flexible configuration of a system under test for automated testing. Pilot application results show that the TDA concept is usable and useful for improving testing efficiency.

Abstract

Automation systems software must provide sufficient diagnosis information for testing to enable early defect detection and quality measurement. However, in many automation systems the aspects of automation, testing, and diagnosis are intertwined in the code. This makes the code harder to read, modify, and test. In this paper we introduce the design of a test-driven automation (TDA) component with separate aspects for automation, diagnosis, and testing to improve testability and test efficiency. We illustrate with a prototype, how automation component aspects allow flexible configuration of a ¿system under test¿ for test automation. Major result of the pilot application is that the TDA concept was found usable and useful to improve testing efficiency.