Integration testing based on software couplings

Integration testing is an important part of the testing process, but few integration testing techniques have been systematically studied or defined. This paper presents an integration testing technique based on couplings between software components. The coupling-based testing technique is described, and 12 coverage criteria are defined. The coupling-based technique is also compared with the category-partition method on a case study, which found that the coupling-based technique detected more faults with fewer test cases than category-partition. This modest result indicates that the coupling-based testing approach can benefit practitioners who are performing integration testing on software. While it is our intention to develop algorithms to fully automate this technique, it is relatively easy to apply by hand.