Specification-based Testing Techniques Research Articles

An Evolutionary Method for the Formal Specification Construction of Service-Based Software

Service-based software (SBS) modeling is considered as a promising way to develop high-quality service-based systems. One major challenge of this methodology is how to effectively utilize existing software services in the process of system modeling to ensure the reliability of the system while reducing the development cost. In this paper, we propose an evolutionary method for the formal specification construction of SBS to tackle this problem. Initial requirements are gradually transformed into a formal design specification through three steps during which existing services are discovered, filtered, selected and adopted. Candidate services are discovered through a keyword-based searching. Then the services are analyzed from both the structural and behavioral perspectives for filtering. A specification-based testing technique is exploited to rigorously determine which candidate services are finally selected. The selected services are incorporated into the formal design model of the system. We present a case study that was conducted for evaluating the usability of the method. We have also developed a prototype tool for supporting the method to be applied in practice.

Identification and deletion of duplicate subtrees in classification tree for test case reduction

Among the many widely used specification-based testing techniques, classification tree method CTM is one of the most acclaimed methods, to generate test cases from the functional specification. While integrating applications, there may be a possibility for the occurrence of duplicates, which affects the performance improvement of integrated applications IAs. To test such applications, CTM can be used to generate test cases. A classification tree, thus generated for this application may have duplicate subtrees and test cases generated from this classification tree may also have redundant test cases. Thus, the existence of duplicate subtrees affects the quality and effectiveness of the classification tree. This paper concentrates on identifying duplicate subtrees through searching techniques and also proposed an enhanced duplicate terminal subtree deletion algorithm, which helps to reduce the number of redundant test cases. Finally, this paper compares the proposed algorithm with the existing one using case studies.

A class library for implementing, testing, and debugging concurrent programs

We describe the Modern Multithreading (MM) class library. MM is a class library consisting of thread and synchronization classes that provide significant support for testing and debugging multithreaded programs. The synchronization classes implement commonly used synchronization objects such as semaphores, monitors, and asynchronous and synchronous message passing channels, for programs that run on a single computer or on a distributed system. MM uses controlled executions to provide program tracing and replay and to support a number of implementation-based and specification-based testing techniques, including non-deterministic and deterministic testing and several forms of reachability testing. MM is portable and easy to use, and has been implemented in Java and C++, with C++ versions for the POSIX Pthreads library and for the Windows Win32 API.

Lightweight Specification-based Testing of Memory Cards: A Case Study

As the markets of mobile devices are expanding, needs for developing reliable memory cards are increasing, too. Samsung, one of the major players in memory card business, is also trying to improve the validation process for their memory card products. To this aim, we conducted a pilot project where a formal method and a specification-based testing technique are adopted to validate our MMC (MultiMediaCard) system. System under testing (SUT) is an MMC card which is implemented in two languages, Verilog for RTL and C for firmware. To test MMC cards, we formalize the fully general behavior model of MMC host with Esterel. It is also used as a test oracle in order to automate testing of SUT. Then, the two models of host and card are co-simulated on the verification environment Seamless. We conducted scenario-based testing and random testing.

Specification-based Testing for Gui-based Applications

The development of GUI-based applications has raised a lot of new issues, one of them being how to automate effective testing for applications with complicated graphical user interactions. In this paper, we discuss the architectural issues and the implementation concerns of our approach to an automated specification-based testing technique for GUI-based applications. This approach is carried out by enriching existing architecture for automated specification-based testing. An essential part of our work is a visual environment to obtain test specifications. This environment pre-runs the Application Under Test (AUT) under its own control, with two prominent characteristics: First, testers can edit test specifications within the true GUI environment of the AUT. Second, the recorded input and output contain the same references as those in the AUT, so that the test cases generated from the edited specification can be used directly by test oracles during the automated testing procedure. We present our running prototype of a visual specification editor that allows users to graphically manipulate test specifications when these specifications are given in term of Finite State Machines (FSM) and the implementations of the AUT are GUI-based Java applications.