Automated test generation from SDL specifications

Abstract

Test generation is an area on which many companies are focusing in search of productivity and quality gains. Current industrial practices include, at best, semi automated test generation techniques, with all the cost and maintenance problems of an error prone process. This process should be fully automatically re-executable, with a complete understanding of the relationships between specification and tests, their meaning, and their execution results. Automated test generation from formal specifications presents a lot of promises, either in cost control or test suite correctness. This chapter presents the result of the integration in Object GEODE of an industrial test generation tool. This tool is based on two complementary test generation prototypes: TVEDA and TGv. TVEDA comes from the research laboratory France-Telecom-CNET; it provides for test purposes and test case generation, based on state space exploration combined with heuristics. TGV has been designed in the research laboratories Irisa and Verimag; it provides test case generation based on efficient, on-the-fly state space exploration techniques.