Towards a Language and Framework for Penurious Testing

Today's testing technologies and tools are all essentially based on the assumption that testers have full, unlimited access to systems under test along with the actual and expected results of test executions. This reflects the fact that, historically, software systems were usually developed by a single organization using components completely under its own control, and were tested in isolation under carefully controlled, "offline" conditions. However, with the rise of service-oriented architectures and the drive for more software reuse, these conditions are changing and the assumption that testers must be given full, trusted access to systems under test is no longer universally valid. In this paper we make the case for a new form of testing -- penurious testing -- in which testers do not have full, trusted access to the entities they test. By means of small examples we motivate its use and describe a language and framework that supports this new form of testing.