47,017 research outputs found
Recommended from our members
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
Potential Errors and Test Assessment in Software Product Line Engineering
Software product lines (SPL) are a method for the development of variant-rich
software systems. Compared to non-variable systems, testing SPLs is extensive
due to an increasingly amount of possible products. Different approaches exist
for testing SPLs, but there is less research for assessing the quality of these
tests by means of error detection capability. Such test assessment is based on
error injection into correct version of the system under test. However to our
knowledge, potential errors in SPL engineering have never been systematically
identified before. This article presents an overview over existing paradigms
for specifying software product lines and the errors that can occur during the
respective specification processes. For assessment of test quality, we leverage
mutation testing techniques to SPL engineering and implement the identified
errors as mutation operators. This allows us to run existing tests against
defective products for the purpose of test assessment. From the results, we
draw conclusions about the error-proneness of the surveyed SPL design paradigms
and how quality of SPL tests can be improved.Comment: In Proceedings MBT 2015, arXiv:1504.0192
Automatic instantiation of abstract tests on specific configurations for large critical control systems
Computer-based control systems have grown in size, complexity, distribution
and criticality. In this paper a methodology is presented to perform an
abstract testing of such large control systems in an efficient way: an abstract
test is specified directly from system functional requirements and has to be
instantiated in more test runs to cover a specific configuration, comprising
any number of control entities (sensors, actuators and logic processes). Such a
process is usually performed by hand for each installation of the control
system, requiring a considerable time effort and being an error prone
verification activity. To automate a safe passage from abstract tests, related
to the so called generic software application, to any specific installation, an
algorithm is provided, starting from a reference architecture and a state-based
behavioural model of the control software. The presented approach has been
applied to a railway interlocking system, demonstrating its feasibility and
effectiveness in several years of testing experience
Advanced flight control system study
A fly by wire flight control system architecture designed for high reliability includes spare sensor and computer elements to permit safe dispatch with failed elements, thereby reducing unscheduled maintenance. A methodology capable of demonstrating that the architecture does achieve the predicted performance characteristics consists of a hierarchy of activities ranging from analytical calculations of system reliability and formal methods of software verification to iron bird testing followed by flight evaluation. Interfacing this architecture to the Lockheed S-3A aircraft for flight test is discussed. This testbed vehicle can be expanded to support flight experiments in advanced aerodynamics, electromechanical actuators, secondary power systems, flight management, new displays, and air traffic control concepts
An integrated search-based approach for automatic testing from extended finite state machine (EFSM) models
This is the post-print version of the Article - Copyright @ 2011 ElsevierThe extended finite state machine (EFSM) is a modelling approach that has been used to represent a wide range of systems. When testing from an EFSM, it is normal to use a test criterion such as transition coverage. Such test criteria are often expressed in terms of transition paths (TPs) through an EFSM. Despite the popularity of EFSMs, testing from an EFSM is difficult for two main reasons: path feasibility and path input sequence generation. The path feasibility problem concerns generating paths that are feasible whereas the path input sequence generation problem is to find an input sequence that can traverse a feasible path. While search-based approaches have been used in test automation, there has been relatively little work that uses them when testing from an EFSM. In this paper, we propose an integrated search-based approach to automate testing from an EFSM. The approach has two phases, the aim of the first phase being to produce a feasible TP (FTP) while the second phase searches for an input sequence to trigger this TP. The first phase uses a Genetic Algorithm whose fitness function is a TP feasibility metric based on dataflow dependence. The second phase uses a Genetic Algorithm whose fitness function is based on a combination of a branch distance function and approach level. Experimental results using five EFSMs found the first phase to be effective in generating FTPs with a success rate of approximately 96.6%. Furthermore, the proposed input sequence generator could trigger all the generated feasible TPs (success rate = 100%). The results derived from the experiment demonstrate that the proposed approach is effective in automating testing from an EFSM
- …