A Divide & Conquer Approach to Testing Concurrent Java Programs with JPF and Maude

Abstract

The paper proposes a new testing technique for concurrent programs. The technique is basically a specification-based testing one. For a formal specification S and a concurrent program P, state sequences are generated from P and checked to be accepted by S. We suppose that S is specified in Maude and P is implemented in Java. Java Pathfinder (JPF) and Maude are then used to generate state sequences from P and to check if such state sequences are accepted by S, respectively. Even without checking any property violations with JPF, JPF often encounters the notorious state space explosion while only generating state sequences. Thus, we propose a technique to generate state sequences from P and check if such state sequences are accepted by S in a stratified way. Some experiments demonstrate that the proposed technique mitigates the state space explosion instances from which otherwise only one JPF instance cannot suffice.