Appeal No. 2002-0273
Application No. 09/078,933
OPINION
Kolawa
Kolawa is directed to a system for software testing. The reference describes an
endeavor in creating an automated test suite generation tool for assisting a programmer
in the generation and execution validation of test suites capable of covering most
source code branches and fully exercising a program’s functionality. Test suite
generation involves creating a set of inputs which force the program to execute different
parts of the source code. Col. 1, l. 26 - col. 2, l. 32.
Kolawa’s system comprises, in general (Fig. 1), a test generation system (TGS)
10, which receives as an input a computer program expressed as source code 11. The
TGS automatically generates as an output a test suite database 12.
The reference describes a JAVA implementation of the system at column 16, line
44 et seq. Kolawa teaches a JAVA platform 202 (Fig. 16), and compiling JAVA source
code 200 into intermediate, portable bytecodes 210, which are not machine-specific.
Col. 16, l. 62 - col. 17, l. 28. The bytecodes are a relatively high-level representation of
the JAVA source code. Accordingly, in the context of Runtime System 222, the
bytecodes are interpreted by JAVA interpreter 220, or turned into machine code by
Just-In-Time Compiler 214. Col. 17, l. 51-65. The TGS provides capability to
symbolically interpret a program in order to get symbolic information about the values of
the program variables at any given point of execution, thus providing information on
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