Debugging real-time software in a host-target environment

A common paradigm for the development of process-control or embedded computer software is to do most of the implementation and testing on a large host computer, then retarget the code for final checkout and production execution on the target machine. The host machine is usually large and provides a variety of program development tools, while the target may be a small, bare machine. A difficulty with the paradigm arises when the software developed has real-time constraints and is composed of multiple communicating processes. If a test execution on the target fails, it may be exceptionally tedious to determine the cause of the failure. Host machine debuggers cannot normally be applied, because the same program processing the same data will frequently exhibit different behavior on the host. Differences in processor speed, scheduling algorithm, and the like, account for the disparity. This paper proposes a partial solution to this problem, in which the errant execution reconstructed and made amenable to source language level debugging on the host. The solution involves the integrated application of a static concurrency analyzer, an interactive interpreter, and a graphical program visualization aid. Though generally applicable, the solution is described here in the context of multi-tasked real-time Ada* programs

Using formal methods to support testing

Formal methods and testing are two important approaches that assist in the development of high quality software. While traditionally these approaches have been seen as rivals, in recent years a new consensus has developed in which they are seen as complementary. This article reviews the state of the art regarding ways in which the presence of a formal specification can be used to assist testing

An implementation of feasible path constraints generation for reproducible testing.

Non-determinism features make the testing of a concurrent program not repeatable. Specification-based reproducible testing is a promising technique that may give the tester more control over the environment of concurrent testing. With a given test case, the crucial part of the test scenario which contributes to achieving the control on the execution path are input events and path constraints in terms of synchronization events. The problem considered in this thesis is to generate a significant set of path constraints automatically from the design specification in terms of design abstract under the assumption that monitors are the key mechanism to handle the synchronization events. In addition, as a considerable feature, formal methods have been applied in the implementation tool to construct the path constraints.Dept. of Computer Science. Paper copy at Leddy Library: Theses & Major Papers - Basement, West Bldg. / Call Number: Thesis2004 .L55. Source: Masters Abstracts International, Volume: 43-01, page: 0239. Adviser: Jessica Chen. Thesis (M.Sc.)--University of Windsor (Canada), 2004

Automated Testing of WS-BPEL Service Compositions: A Scenario-Oriented Approach

Nowadays, Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) has become one mainstream paradigm for developing distributed applications. As the basic unit in SOA, Web services can be composed to construct complex applications. The quality of Web services and their compositions is critical to the success of SOA applications. Testing, as a major quality assurance technique, is confronted with new challenges in the context of service compositions. In this paper, we propose a scenario-oriented testing approach that can automatically generate test cases for service compositions. Our approach is particularly focused on the service compositions specified by Business Process Execution Language for Web Services (WS-BPEL), a widely recognized executable service composition language. In the approach, a WS-BPEL service composition is first abstracted into a graph model; test scenarios are then derived from the model; finally, test cases are generated according to different scenarios. We also developed a prototype tool implementing the proposed approach, and an empirical study was conducted to demonstrate the applicability and effectiveness of our approach. The experimental results show that the automatic scenario-oriented testing approach is effective in detecting many types of faults seeded in the service compositions

Ada(R) Test and Verification System (ATVS)

The Ada Test and Verification System (ATVS) functional description and high level design are completed and summarized. The ATVS will provide a comprehensive set of test and verification capabilities specifically addressing the features of the Ada language, support for embedded system development, distributed environments, and advanced user interface capabilities. Its design emphasis was on effective software development environment integration and flexibility to ensure its long-term use in the Ada software development community