Colored model based testing for software product lines (CMBT-SWPL)

Over the last decade, the software product line domain has emerged as one of the mostpromising software development paradigms. The main benefits of a software product lineapproach are improvements in productivity, time to market, product quality, and customersatisfaction.Therefore, one topic that needs greater emphasis is testing of software product lines toachieve the required software quality assurance. Our concern is how to test a softwareproduct line as early as possible in order to detect errors, because the cost of error detectedIn early phases is much less compared to the cost of errors when detected later.The method suggested in this thesis is a model-based, reuse-oriented test technique calledColored Model Based Testing for Software Product Lines (CMBT-SWPL). CMBT-SWPLis a requirements-based approach for efficiently generating tests for products in a soft-ware product line. This testing approach is used for validation and verification of productlines. It is a novel approach to test product lines using a Colored State Chart (CSC), whichconsiders variability early in the product line development process. More precisely, the vari-ability will be introduced in the main components of the CSC. Accordingly, the variabilityis preserved in test cases, as they are generated from colored test models automatically.During domain engineering, the CSC is derived from the feature model. By coloring theState Chart, the behavior of several product line variants can be modeled simultaneouslyin a single diagram and thus address product line variability early. The CSC representsthe test model, from which test cases using statistical testing are derived.During application engineering, these colored test models are customized for a specificapplication of the product line. At the end of this test process, the test cases are generatedagain using statistical testing, executed and the test results are ready for evaluation. Inxaddition, the CSC will be transformed to a Colored Petri Net (CPN) for verification andsimulation purposes.The main gains of applying the CMBT-SWPL method are early detection of defects inrequirements, such as ambiguities incompleteness and redundancy which is then reflectedin saving the test effort, time, development and maintenance costs

Model based test suite minimization using metaheuristics

Software testing is one of the most widely used methods for quality assurance and fault detection purposes. However, it is one of the most expensive, tedious and time consuming activities in software development life cycle. Code-based and specification-based testing has been going on for almost four decades. Model-based testing (MBT) is a relatively new approach to software testing where the software models as opposed to other artifacts (i.e. source code) are used as primary source of test cases. Models are simplified representation of a software system and are cheaper to execute than the original or deployed system. The main objective of the research presented in this thesis is the development of a framework for improving the efficiency and effectiveness of test suites generated from UML models. It focuses on three activities: transformation of Activity Diagram (AD) model into Colored Petri Net (CPN) model, generation and evaluation of AD based test suite and optimization of AD based test suite. Unified Modeling Language (UML) is a de facto standard for software system analysis and design. UML models can be categorized into structural and behavioral models. AD is a behavioral type of UML model and since major revision in UML version 2.x it has a new Petri Nets like semantics. It has wide application scope including embedded, workflow and web-service systems. For this reason this thesis concentrates on AD models. Informal semantics of UML generally and AD specially is a major challenge in the development of UML based verification and validation tools. One solution to this challenge is transforming a UML model into an executable formal model. In the thesis, a three step transformation methodology is proposed for resolving ambiguities in an AD model and then transforming it into a CPN representation which is a well known formal language with extensive tool support. Test case generation is one of the most critical and labor intensive activities in testing processes. The flow oriented semantic of AD suits modeling both sequential and concurrent systems. The thesis presented a novel technique to generate test cases from AD using a stochastic algorithm. In order to determine if the generated test suite is adequate, two test suite adequacy analysis techniques based on structural coverage and mutation have been proposed. In terms of structural coverage, two separate coverage criteria are also proposed to evaluate the adequacy of the test suite from both perspectives, sequential and concurrent. Mutation analysis is a fault-based technique to determine if the test suite is adequate for detecting particular types of faults. Four categories of mutation operators are defined to seed specific faults into the mutant model. Another focus of thesis is to improve the test suite efficiency without compromising its effectiveness. One way of achieving this is identifying and removing the redundant test cases. It has been shown that the test suite minimization by removing redundant test cases is a combinatorial optimization problem. An evolutionary computation based test suite minimization technique is developed to address the test suite minimization problem and its performance is empirically compared with other well known heuristic algorithms. Additionally, statistical analysis is performed to characterize the fitness landscape of test suite minimization problems. The proposed test suite minimization solution is extended to include multi-objective minimization. As the redundancy is contextual, different criteria and their combination can significantly change the solution test suite. Therefore, the last part of the thesis describes an investigation into multi-objective test suite minimization and optimization algorithms. The proposed framework is demonstrated and evaluated using prototype tools and case study models. Empirical results have shown that the techniques developed within the framework are effective in model based test suite generation and optimizatio

An evaluation of the software architecture efficiency using the Clichés and behavioral diagrams pertaining to the unified modeling language

The software architecture plays essential role for the development of the complicated software systems and it is important to evaluate the software architecture efficiency. One way to evaluate the software architecture is to create an executable model from the architecture. Unified Modeling Language (UML) diagrams are used to describe the software architecture. UML has made it easy to use and to evaluate the necessary requirements at the software architecture level. It creates an executable model from these diagrams; yet, since the UML is a standard semi-formal language for describing the software architecture, evaluating the software architecture is not directly possible through it. Furthermore, in order to evaluate the software architecture, one needs to turn the actual model into the formal model. In this study, first we describe the architecture using the UML. Then, some properties of the software architecture are mentioned using the UML sequence diagram, deployment diagram, use case diagram, and component diagram. The necessary information associated with the qualitative characteristic of efficiency will be margined as clichés and labels to these diagrams. The independent and dependent components will be extracted from the component diagram. Finally, the resulted semi-formal model will be mapped into a formal model based on the colored Petri net and finally the evaluation will take place

Business Process Variability:a study into process management and verification

Business process management (BPM) beheert en optimaliseert bedrijfsprocessen met het doel om productiviteit en bedrijfsprestaties te verhogen. BPM is een snel evoluerend veld door nieuw opkomende vereisten vanuit flexibele bedrijfstakken waar bedrijfsprocessen steeds minder star behoren te zijn. Waar BPM in het verleden specifieke rigide en repetitieve werkeenheden ondersteunde voor de lokale gebruiker, wordt tegenwoordig vereist dat het losgekoppelde processen ondersteunt in cloud configuraties, te midden van vele gebruikers met elk vele verschillende eisen.Zolang het BPM veld een stijgend aantal snel evoluerende bedrijfsprocessen in flexibele bedrijfstakken ondersteunt, moet de evolutie van elk bedrijfsproces aanhoudend correct gedrag vertonen en tevens voldoen aan de opgelegde wet- en regelgeving en interne bedrijfsregels. Om het aanhoudend correct gedrag te ondersteunen van snel evoluerende BP, of de definitie van een breed aantal soortgelijke bedrijfsprocessen, evalueren we de toepassing van formele verificatietechnieken als mogelijke oplossing voor analyse van het juiste gedrag en wettelijk conforme ontwerp van bedrijfsprocessen binnen mogelijke proces families, welke plaatsvindt voorafgaand aan de uitvoering van dat bedrijfsproces.Een innovatieve benadering voor verificatie tijdens de ontwerpfase wordt gepresenteerd. De benadering ondersteunt de verschillende vertakkende en samenvoegende constructies zoals toegestaan in bedrijfsprocesmodellen en hun service composities. Evaluaties met betrekking tot expressiviteit bewijzen dat, anders dan doorgaans toegepaste transitiesystemen, het voorgestelde model bekende bedrijfsprocespatronen juist vastlegt. Verder behoudt het model informatie over de aanwezigheid van parallelle activiteiten en de lokale volgende activiteit: een eigenschap uniek aan de voorgestelde aanpak.Business Process Management (BPM) manages and optimizes business processes with the intent to increase productivity and performance. BPM is a rapidly evolving field due to new requirements emerging at agile branches of business where business processes are required to be less and less rigid. Where BPM supported local user-specific rigid and repetitive units of work in the past, these days it is required to support loosely-coupled processes in cloud configurations among many users with each many different requirements.As the field of BPM continues to manage an increasing number of rapidly evolving business processes in agile environments, the evolution of each business process must continue to always behave in a correct manner and remain compliant with the laws, regulations, and internal business requirements imposed upon it. To manage the correct behavior of quickly evolving business processes, or the definition of a wide variety of similar business processes, we evaluate the application of formal verification techniques as a possible solution for the pre-runtime analysis of the correct behavior and compliant design of business processes within possible process families. A novel approach allowing pre-runtime verification that supports the different branching and merging constructs allowed by business process models and their service compositions is presented. Evaluations on expressive power demonstrate that, other than the generally employed transition systems, the proposed model correctly captures well-known business process patterns. Furthermore, it maintains information on parallel occurrences of activities and the local next activity occurrence: an ability which is unique to the presented approach

Search-based system architecture development using a holistic modeling approach

This dissertation presents an innovative approach to system architecting where search algorithms are used to explore design trade space for good architecture alternatives. Such an approach is achieved by integrating certain model construction, alternative generation, simulation, and assessment processes into a coherent and automated framework. This framework is facilitated by a holistic modeling approach that combines the capabilities of Object Process Methodology (OPM), Colored Petri Net (CPN), and feature model. The resultant holistic model can not only capture the structural, behavioral, and dynamic aspects of a system, allowing simulation and strong analysis methods to be applied, it can also specify the architectural design space. Both object-oriented analysis and design (OOA/D) and domain engineering were exploited to capture design variables and their domains and define architecture generation operations. A fully realized framework (with genetic algorithms as the search algorithm) was developed. Both the proposed framework and its suggested implementation, including the proposed holistic modeling approach and architecture alternative generation operations, are generic. They are targeted at systems that can be specified using object-oriented or process-oriented paradigm. The broad applicability of the proposed approach is demonstrated on two examples. One is the configuration of reconfigurable manufacturing systems (RMSs) under multi-objective optimization and the other is the architecture design of a manned lunar landing system for the Apollo program. The test results show that the proposed approach can cover a huge number of architecture alternatives and support the assessment of several performance measures. A set of quality results was obtained after running the optimization algorithm following the proposed framework --Abstract, page iii