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 Of all the books that I have read on software testing, this is certainly one of the better ones. Component testing is a pretty vast topic in itself and equally complex. When I started reading this book I was a bit diffident about the coverage as well as the quality of the material. Although in some cases the book does talk at a higher level rather than going into details, overall, Hans-Gerhard Gross has done a good job. The important thing to bear in mind is that this book is not for beginners. Understanding this book completely requires a strong development or a testing background (preferably white box testing) with exposure to COM / DCOM and UML..
The book is beautifully structured, crisp and methodical. The author’s vast experience in real-time systems is reflected throughout the book. In chapters 1 and 2, the author gives an insight in the world of component development as well as testing. While going through this section I felt that a few more details on component(s) would have been more helpful in understanding the later part of the book, especially for an amateur. The author has illustrated his views through a number of good examples, UML’s, flow charts and code snippets. The most famous example among these is the ARIANE 5 failure, where-in a rocket of the European Space Agency blew up in mid-air, just 40 seconds after take-off. All because of a software exception which was caused through a conversion of a 64 bit floating value into a 16 bit integer value. Moving forward, the author explains component-based and model-driven development and testing with UML. Chapters 3, 4 and 5 cover model-based testing with UML, Built-in contract testing and their implementation technologies. Topics covered in these chapters include component testing in a variety of languages such as C, C++ and Java, various component technologies such as JavaBeans, COM, DCOM, ActiveX, COM+, .NET, CORBA, OMA and CCM as well as the implementation technologies for built-in contract testing, chiefly XUnit, JUnit and TTCN-3. Chapters 6 and 7, talk about the use and reuse of contract testing artifacts, testing of product families and assessing the quality of service. These include the CLARiFi component broker platform and the Resource Information System (RIN).
One of the best things about this book is that the author not only speaks about what should be done, he also discusses implementation of the same. To sum it up, this book is a good read for professionals working in the software testing field, needless to say, in component testing. |
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