Behavior capture and test for verifying evolving component-based systems

Component-based system (CBS) technology supports rapid development of complex heterogeneous evolving systems by enhancing reuse and adaptability. CBSs can be extended and adapted by modifying one or more components. The same component can be used in several systems, and the same system can be deployed in many configurations that differ for some components. Traditional test and analysis techniques make little use of quality information about components and subsystems when testing the whole system. Thus, reusability for quality assessment and reduction of quality related costs are not fully exploited. Moreover, verification of CBSs is hardened by the frequent lack of information about components that are provided by third parties without source code and with incomplete documentation. This framework reduces the applicability of many traditional testing and analysis techniques for CBSs. Main goal of my PhD research is the definition and experimentation of testing and analysis techniques that allow to efficiently test CBSs in presence of limited information about design and code by reusing behavioral information that can be gathered from previous usage of the components.