Indian Journal of Science and Technology

Abstract

This research compares two code coverage tools to understand the relationship between the code coverage and regression testing, henceforth the effectiveness of the code coverage detail provided by the tools. The methodology adopted to meet the objectives follows theoretical as well as empirical approach. To achieve the empirical approach a platform was setup in eclipse IDE for Java application which was integrated with Junit to execute test cases for Java program. Two open source code coverage tools CodeCover and Eclemma were exercised respectively upon a small Java application with twenty one test cases. This execution shows that EclEmma is effective in providing the detail of individual test case. CodeCover on the other side provides combined measurement of the test cases. CodeCover provide the coverage at fine level as well as at coarser level of granularity. However regression testing demands detail coverage made by each test case which code cover fails to dispense. EclEmma generates code coverage report by providing information about individual test case. This information is most desirable when performing test case optimization in regression testing. Further coverage details of test suites given by code coverage tool will be used in proposing a hybrid regression test case optimization technique.
Keywords: CodeCover, Coverage, EclEmma, Regression Testing, Test Case