Introduction to IBM Rational application developer Code Coverage tools

Generate code coverage statistics for your Java program

Introduction: The Code coverage tool is an important tool used during software testing because it provides an idea of how the program is covered by the test case. This article shows you how to generate test coverage results for Java™ programs using the Code overlay tool provided in Ibm®rational®application Developer, and provides information on how to analyze the results to improve the test.

What is the Rational Code Coverage feature?

Code coverage is an important aspect of software testing and may be a basic parameter for the overall system testing of a component. The motivation behind the overlay tool gives you (as a developer or tester) a range of ideas about the code that will be examined in a series of tests. This information is useful because you can use it to design new test cases to get enough coverage.

The Ibm®rational®code Coverage feature is a tool that integrates with Ibm®rational®application Developer. You can use it to generate and analyze coverage statistics about Java programs. The tool generates claim coverage statistics for the program under test (that is, the number and percentage of rows in the execution program).

The rational Code Coverage feature is now available only for rational application Developer version 7.5 and its successor. This article assumes that you are using the Rational application Developer version 7.5.4. The part of configuring Ibm®websphere®application Server for code coverage assumes that you are using version 7.0, but some of the guidance provided will still apply to the above version.

Guide

In order to properly analyze the coverage statistics in the Rational Code Coverage feature, it is important to understand the techniques used behind the scenes.

Eclipse Test and the tool engine used by the Rational Code Coverage feature provided in Performance Tools Project (TPTP). Probekit is used to control the bit code of a class and to introduce universal access to the coverage data collection engine. Figure 1 provides a high-level overview of the process:

Figure 1. An overview of the Rational Code Coverage execution Environment