Program Test Generator

The JUnit suite of  tools provide a means for automating the testing of programs to a level hitherto unachievable.  This has major implications in both the software development and education fields.  It is envisaged that the proposed project will take advantage of this situation.  It will:

• provide a form based user interface which allows a teacher/software developer to define a class, its attributes and methods and different criteria for testing these methods
  
• generate an XML description of the class and the test criteria
• generate a JUnit test script from the XML description
• generate a program skeleton from the XML description
• generate javadoc for the program skeleton
  
• generate any other required reports.

At the end of this process a teacher should be able to hand a student  a program specification in javadoc format and a JUnit test class,  which the student should then be able to use to create and test  a program to completion.

There is a sample program specification here, test script here, and solution program here

 A possible schema is shown below. 




The system produced from this project should if possible build on the work of any similar and suitable open source project.
It should also be compatible with the 'George' website manager and the exam management system currently under development.

There are notes on building XML descriptions of Java classes here.

This is an opportunity work on a new project at the cutting edge, whilst at the same time building on the excellent set of educational tools already developed at Swinburne.  These tools have wide applicability across the entire educational market and could form the basis for a business providing software solutions to this market.

For more information see Richard Forster