Model-Based Mutation Testing of Synchronous and Asynchronous Real-Time Systems

Abstract

A lot of systems nowadays, especially in safety-critical areas, have to comply to very strict real-time requirements. Deviation from the specified time behavior can lead to severe faults. Thus the components need to be thoroughly tested to ensure a high quality standard. Model-based testing is a popular technology for automatic and systematic test-case generation, where a system-under-test is tested for conformance with a model that specifies its intended behavior. Model-based mutation testing is a specific fault-oriented variant of model- based testing. In this variant of testing, the test case generation is guided by a mutant, an intentionally altered version of the original model that specifies a common modeling error, to generate a specific test case capable of identifying that error. In the presented thesis we investigate ways to apply model-based mutation testing to real-time applications. The plan is to investigate two specification languages: timed automata and timed contracts. We already developed an algorithm and an implementation for testing deterministic timed automata and a theory and implementation for untimed contracts. In the last year of the thesis we will concentrate on determinizing timed automata restricted to the bounded case, supporting the test-case generation from networks of timed automata and adding real-time support to our contract-based testing tool. The final step of the thesis will be the evaluation on industrial case studies.