State-based Testing is Functional Testing

Empirical studies report unsatisfactory fault detection of state-based methods in class testing and advocate the use of functional methods to complement state-based testing. In this paper, we take the view that the modest fault detection of state-based class testing reported in the literature is actually due to the inappropriate state diagram used. We show that functional testing of a class can be reduced to state-based testing, provided that the right state model is produced. We present a strategy for constructing a state diagram for a class method, based on a domain partition derived through functional techniques. We also describe a method for deriving test sequences from the resulting state diagrams, essentially a variant of the W-method. The paper also reports results from an experimental evaluation of the proposed approach, based on mutants generated by Mu- Java.