Testability Analysis of a UML Class Diagram

Design-for-testability is a very important issue in software engineering. It becomes crucial in the case of OO designs where control flows are generally not hierarchical, but are diffuse and distributed over the whole architecture. In this paper, we concentrate on detecting, pinpointing and suppressing potential testability weaknesses of a UML class diagram. The attribute significant from design testability is called “class interaction”: it appears when potentially concurrent client/supplier relationships between classes exist in the system. These interactions point out parts of the design that need to be improved, driving structural modifications or constraints specifications, to reduce the final testing effort.