Data flow testing in concurrent programs with message passing and shared memory paradigms

This paper proposes a novel structural test model to capture information about flows of data, control, communication and synchronization of parallel and distributed applications interacting through both message passing and shared memory paradigms. Our main focus is the data flow among threads of different processes, considering the operations of communication and synchronization related to such flow. This inter-process data-flow represents a challenge to the tester, who must consider the heterogeneity of programming paradigms and languages. The information captured by the test model is used by new testing criteria, which improve the testing activity quality. The proposed model and criteria were applied to an object-oriented and distributed application developed in Java. The results suggest that the model and the criteria are able to represent distributed applications developed with message passing and shared memory paradigms. The main contribution of this paper is to present a more flexible test model capable of improving the structural test activity related to the data flow on processes and threads simultaneously.