Automated Model Driven Testing Using AndroMDA and UML2 Testing Profile in Scrum Process

AbstractSoftware testing is an important step in the life cycle of agile development; it represents an efficient way to ensure the good functioning of the product. But as the complexity of a system increases, the effort and expertise to test it also increases. To significantly reduce these efforts, and reduce the cost and time; several studies have been carried out and various tools and test automation techniques have been proposed. In this paper, we present an approach to automatic generation of test cases from UML 2 Models at the Scrum agile process. This approach automates two important steps: the transformation of design models into test models and generating test cases, based on an open source MDA framework

A Model-Driven Methodology for Critical Systems Engineering

Model-Driven Engineering (MDE) promises to enhance system development by reducing development time, and increasing productivity and quality. MDE is gaining popularity in several industry sectors, and is attractive also for critical systems where they can reduce efforts and costs for verification and validation (V&V), and can ease certification. This thesis proposes a novel model-driven life cycle that is tailored to the development of critical railway systems. It also integrates an original approach for model-driven system validation, based on a new model named Computation Independent Test model (CIT). Moreover, the process supports the Failure Modes and Effect Analysis (FMEA), with a novel approach to conduct Model-Driven FMEA, based on custom SysML Diagram, namely the FMEA Diagram, and Prolog. The approaches have been experimented in multiple real-world case studies, from railway and automative domains

Integration and Test of MOF/UML-based Domain-specific Modeling Languages

In model-driven development (MDD), domain-specific modeling languages (DSMLs) are used as tailor-made software languages targeting dedicated application domains. Due to the narrow domain coverage of DSMLs, demands to integrate their individual functionality into a consolidated DSML arise (e.g., developing a software product combining two or more pre-existing DSMLs). However, in order to realize the benefits of integrated DSMLs, it must be ensured that the integrated DSML is correctly implemented and behaves as specified. To support the integration and the test of DSMLs, this thesis presents an approach targeting the Meta Object Facility (MOF) and the Unified Modeling Language (UML)- a metamodeling infrastructure frequently employed for the MDD of software systems. The integration of DSMLs is based on a rewriting technique for model-to-text (M2T) transformations. This method allows for the reuse as well as for the automatic refactoring of M2T transformation templates to fix important syntactical mismatches between templates and the integrated DSML. To test an integrated DSML, scenarios are used to define domain requirements on an abstract level (via structured text descriptions). In a subsequent step, executable scenario tests are derived from the requirements-level scenarios. These executable scenario specifications are then employed to test the integrated DSML for compliance with corresponding domain requirements. Empirical evaluations of the approach (case studies, controlled experiment) demonstrate its successful application, collect evidence for its usefulness, and quantify its benefits. The integrated proof-of-concept implementations build on the Eclipse Modeling Framework (EMF), making use of and extending well-known Eclipse-based projects. All accompanying developments are placed into the public domain as free/libre open source software. Within the framework of this thesis, research results were originally published as individual contributions (workshop, conference, and journal articles). All research contributions are results of applying a design science research approach. (author's abstract

A Model-driven Approach for the Automatic Generation of System-Level Test Cases

Systems at the basis of the modern society, as the as the homeland security, the environment protection, the public and private transportations, the healthcare or the energy supply depend on the correct functioning of one or more embedded systems. In several cases, such systems shall be considered critical, since the consequences of their failures may result in economic losses, damages to the environment or even injuries to human life. Possible disastrous consequences of embedded critical systems, suggest that discover flaws during systems development and avoid their propagation to the system execution, is a crucial task. In fact, most of the failures found during the usage of embedded critical systems, is due to errors introduced during early stages of the system development. Thus, it is desiderable to start Verification and Validation (V&V) activities during early stages of a system life cycle. However such V&V activities can account over the 50% of times and costs of a system life cycle and there is therefore the need to introduce techniques able to reduce the accounted resources without losses in term efficiency. Among the methodologies found in scientific and industrial literature there is a large interest in the V&V automation. In particular, automatic verification can be performed during different stages of a system development life cycle and can assume different meanings. In this thesis, the focus is on the automation of the test cases generation phase performed at the System level starting from SUT and test specifications. A recent research trend, related to this, is to support such process providing a flexible tool chain allowing for effective Model Driven Engineering (MDE) approaches. The adoption of a model-driven techniques requires the modelling of the SUT to drive the generation process, by using suitable domain-specific modelling languages and model transformations. Thus, a successful application of the MDE principles is related to the choice of the high-level language for SUT specification and the tools and techniques provided to support the V\&V processes. According to this, the model-driven approach define in this thesis relies on three key factors: (1) the definition of new domain-specific modelling languages (DSMLs) for the SUT and the test specifications, (2) the adoption of model checking techniques to realize the generation of the test cases and (3) the implementation of a concrete framework providing a complete tool chain supporting the automation process. This work is partially involved in an ARTEMIS European project CRYSTAL (CRitical sYSTem engineering AcceLeration). CRYSTAL is strongly industry-oriented and aims at achieving technical innovation by a user-driven approach based on the idea to apply engineering methods to industrially relevant Use Cases from the automotive, aerospace, rail and health-care sectors. The DSML that will be presented in this thesis, emerged as an attempt to address the modelling requirements and the design practices of the industrial partners of the project, within a rigorous and well-founded formal specification and verification approach. In fact, the main requirement that a modelling language suitable for the industry should have is to be small and as simple as possible. Thus, the modelling language should provide an adequate set of primitive constructs to allow for a natural modelling of the system of interest. Furthermore, the larger the gap between the design specification and the actual implementation is, the less useful the results of the design analysis would be. The test case generation is supported by model checking techniques; the SUT and test models are in fact translated in specifications expressed by the language adopted by a model checker. The thesis discusses all the issues addressed in the mapping process and provides their implementations by means of model transformations. A class of test specifications is addressed to exemplify the generation process over a common class of reachability requirements. The model-driven approach discussed in the thesis is applied in the contest of the railway control systems, and in particular on some of the key functionalities of the Radio Block Center, the main component of the ERTMS/ETCS standards for the interoperability of the railway control systems in the European Community. The thesis is organized as follows. The first chapter introduces embedded critical systems and outlines the main research trends related to their V&V process. The Chapter 2 outlines the state of the art in testing automation with a particular focus on model-driven approaches for automatic test generation. The same Chapter 2 provides also the necessary technical background supporting to understand the development process of the supporting framework. The Chapter 3 describes the context of the CRYSTAL project and the proposed model-driven approach partially involved in its activities. The Chapter 4 describes the domains pecific modelling languages defined for the modelling of the SUT specifications and of the test generation outcomes. Moreover the guidelines defined for modelling test specifications are discussed. The Chapter 5 focuses on the mapping process that enable the translation of the high-level language for the modelling of the SUT specification to the language adopted by the chosen model checker. The implementation of the overall framework is addressed in Chapter 6. Here model transformations realizing the defined mappings and the architecture of the Test Case Generator (TCG) framework are described and discussed. The Chapter 7 shows the results of the application of the approach in the context of the railway control systems and in particular to the Radio Block Centre system, a key component in the ERTMS/ETCS standard. Chapter 8 end the thesis, giving some conclusive remarks

A software development framework for context-aware systems

The beginning of the new century has been characterised by the miniaturisation and accessibility of electronics, which has enabled its widespread usage around the world. This technological background is progressively materialising the future of the remainder of the century, where industry-based societies have been moving towards information-based societies. Information from users and their environment is now pervasively available, and many new research areas have born in order to shape the potential of such advancements. Particularly, context-aware computing is at the core of many areas such as Intelligent Environments, Ambient Intelligence, Ambient Assisted Living or Pervasive Computing. Embedding contextual awareness into computers promises a fundamental enhancement in the interaction between computers and humans. While traditional computers require explicit commands in order to operate, contextually aware computers could also use information from the background and the users to provide services according to the situation. But embedding this contextual awareness has many unresolved challenges. The area of context-aware computing has attracted the interest of many researchers that have presented different approaches to solve particular aspects on the implementation of this technology. The great corpus of research in this direction indicates that context-aware systems have different requirements than those of traditional computing. Approaches for developing context-aware systems are typically scattered or do not present compatibility with other approaches. Existing techniques for creating context-aware systems also do not focus on covering all the different stages of a typical software development life-cycle. The contribution of this thesis is towards the foundation layers of a more holistic approach, that tries to facilitate further research on the best techniques for developing these kinds of systems. The approach presents a framework to support the development not only with methodologies, but with open-source tools that facilitate the implementation of context-aware systems in mobile and stationary platforms

A Model-Driven Architecture based Evolution Method and Its Application in An Electronic Learning System

Software products have been racing against aging problem for most of their lifecycles, and evolution is the most effective and efficient solution to this problem. Model-Driven Architecture (MDA) is a new technique for software product for evolving development and reengineering methods. The main steps for MDA are to establish models in different levels and phases, therefore to solve the challenges of requirement and technology change. However, there is only a standard established by Object Management Group (OMG) but without a formal method and approach. Presently, MDA is widely researched in both industrial and research areas, however, there is still without a smooth approach to realise it especially in electronic learning (e-learning) system due to the following reasons: (1) models’ transformations are hard to realise because of lack of tools, (2) most of existing mature research results are working for business and government services but not education area, and (3) most of existing model-driven researches are based on Model-Driven Development (MDD) but not MDA because of OMG standard’s preciseness. Hence, it is worth to investigate an MDA-based method and approach to improve the existing software development approach for e-learning system. Due to the features of MDA actuality, a MDA-based evolution method and approach is proposed in this thesis. The fundamental theories of this research are OMG’s MDA standard and education pedagogical knowledge. Unified Modelling Language (UML) and Unified Modelling Language Profile are hired to represent the information of software system from different aspects. This study can be divided into three main parts: MDA-based evolution method and approach research, Platform-Independent Model (PIM) to Platform-Specific Model (PSM) transformation development, and MDA-based electronic learning system evolution. Top-down approach is explored to develop models for e-learning system. A transformation approach is developed to generate Computation Independent Model (CIM), Platform-Independent Model (PIM), and Platform-Specific Model (PSM); while a set of transformation rules are defined following MDA standard to support PSM’ s generation. In addition, proposed method is applied in an e-learning system as a case study with the prototype rules support. In the end, conclusions are drawn based on analysis and further research directions are discussed as well. The kernel contributions are the proposed transformation rules and its application in electronic learning system

Certifications of Critical Systems – The CECRIS Experience

In recent years, a considerable amount of effort has been devoted, both in industry and academia, to the development, validation and verification of critical systems, i.e. those systems whose malfunctions or failures reach a critical level both in terms of risks to human life as well as having a large economic impact.Certifications of Critical Systems – The CECRIS Experience documents the main insights on Cost Effective Verification and Validation processes that were gained during work in the European Research Project CECRIS (acronym for Certification of Critical Systems). The objective of the research was to tackle the challenges of certification by focusing on those aspects that turn out to be more difficult/important for current and future critical systems industry: the effective use of methodologies, processes and tools.The CECRIS project took a step forward in the growing field of development, verification and validation and certification of critical systems. It focused on the more difficult/important aspects of critical system development, verification and validation and certification process. Starting from both the scientific and industrial state of the art methodologies for system development and the impact of their usage on the verification and validation and certification of critical systems, the project aimed at developing strategies and techniques supported by automatic or semi-automatic tools and methods for these activities, setting guidelines to support engineers during the planning of the verification and validation phases

Certifications of Critical Systems – The CECRIS Experience

In recent years, a considerable amount of effort has been devoted, both in industry and academia, to the development, validation and verification of critical systems, i.e. those systems whose malfunctions or failures reach a critical level both in terms of risks to human life as well as having a large economic impact.Certifications of Critical Systems – The CECRIS Experience documents the main insights on Cost Effective Verification and Validation processes that were gained during work in the European Research Project CECRIS (acronym for Certification of Critical Systems). The objective of the research was to tackle the challenges of certification by focusing on those aspects that turn out to be more difficult/important for current and future critical systems industry: the effective use of methodologies, processes and tools.The CECRIS project took a step forward in the growing field of development, verification and validation and certification of critical systems. It focused on the more difficult/important aspects of critical system development, verification and validation and certification process. Starting from both the scientific and industrial state of the art methodologies for system development and the impact of their usage on the verification and validation and certification of critical systems, the project aimed at developing strategies and techniques supported by automatic or semi-automatic tools and methods for these activities, setting guidelines to support engineers during the planning of the verification and validation phases