Test-Driven Component Integration with UML 2.0 Testing and Monitoring Profile

Test-driven development (TDD) is a software development methodology for achieving high reliability. However, the practice of TDD at the integration level is rare. In this paper, we propose a test-driven component integration approach with the support of UML 2.0 Testing and Monitoring Profile (U2TMP) that is also proposed in this paper. In our approach, automated integration-level test cases are specified using U2TMP before writing the glue-code that integrates components. U2TMP enhances UML 2.0 diagrams for specifying how test scenarios should be set up and how the integrated components are expected to interact under these scenarios. Test cases written in U2TMP can be automatically transformed into test artifacts that setup the test environment, generate test stimuli, and monitor the component interactions at runtime. These test cases serve as a guideline for writing the glue-code and a regression test- bed. With this approach, the software developers may produce glue-code of high reliability.