Constructing checking sequences for distributed testing

Abstract

Abstract The objective of testing is to determine whether an implementation under test conforms to its specification. In distributed test architectures involving multiple remote testers, this objective can be complicated by the fact that testers may encounter coordination problems relating to controllability (synchronization) and observability during the application of tests. Based on a finite state machine (FSM) specification of the externally observable behaviour of a distributed system and a distinguishing sequence, this paper proposes a method for constructing a checking sequence where there is no potential controllability or observability problems, and where the use of external coordination message exchanges among testers is minimized. The proposed method does not assume a reliable reset feature in the implementations of the given FSM to be tested by the resulting checking sequence.