Formal Specification and Automatic Verification of Conditional Commitments

Developing and implementing a model checker dedicated to conditional logic with the user interface are urgent requirements for determining whether agents comply with their commitment protocols

Overcoming controllability problems in distributed testing from an input output transition system

This is the Pre-print version of the Article. The official published version can be accessed from the link below - Copyright @ 2012 Springer VerlagThis paper concerns the testing of a system with physically distributed interfaces, called ports, at which it interacts with its environment. We place a tester at each port and the tester at port p observes events at p only. This can lead to controllability problems, where the observations made by the tester at a port p are not sufficient for it to be able to know when to send an input. It is known that there are test objectives, such as executing a particular transition, that cannot be achieved if we restrict attention to test cases that have no controllability problems. This has led to interest in schemes where the testers at the individual ports send coordination messages to one another through an external communications network in order to overcome controllability problems. However, such approaches have largely been studied in the context of testing from a deterministic finite state machine. This paper investigates the use of coordination messages to overcome controllability problems when testing from an input output transition system and gives an algorithm for introducing sufficient messages. It also proves that the problem of minimising the number of coordination messages used is NP-hard

Conformance relations for distributed testing based on CSP

Copyright @ 2011 Springer Berlin HeidelbergCSP is a well established process algebra that provides comprehensive theoretical and practical support for refinement-based design and verification of systems. Recently, a testing theory for CSP has also been presented. In this paper, we explore the problem of testing from a CSP specification when observations are made by a set of distributed testers. We build on previous work on input-output transition systems, but the use of CSP leads to significant differences, since some of its conformance (refinement) relations consider failures as well as traces. In addition, we allow events to be observed by more than one tester. We show how the CSP notions of refinement can be adapted to distributed testing. We consider two contexts: when the testers are entirely independent and when they can cooperate. Finally, we give some preliminary results on test-case generation and the use of coordination messages. © 2011 IFIP International Federation for Information Processing

A Temporal Logic Based Theory of Test Coverage and Generation

This paper presents a theory of test coverage and generation from specifications written in extended finite state machines (EFSMs). We investigate a family of coverage criteria based on the information of control flow and data flow in EFSMs and characterize them using the temporal logic CTL. We discuss the complexity of minimal cost test generation and describe a simple heuristic which uses the capability of model checkers to construct counterexamples. Our approach extends the range of applications of model checking from automatic verification of finite state systems to automatic test generation from finite state systems

Testability Analysis of the Communication Protocols Modeled by Relations

. The cost of the test activity constitutes an important part of the total development cost. To make test easier (cost, time, and efforts), the consideration of test problems before the implementation phase is now necessary. This early consideration is known as Design for testability (DFT). The design of testable software does not consist solely in applying methods that improve the testability but also to verify if the degree of testability of the new obtained product is acceptable. This activity can be carried out using testability evaluation and a set of appropriate transformations. We propose a method based on the modeling of software by relations. The testability of a given specification is defined as a set of factors that influence the tests. These factors are evaluated separately and their values are gathered in a vector called the testability vector. The evaluation is based on the properties of a relation such as determinism, definissability, and informability. The method is use..

A Negotiation Model For Distributed Multimedia Applications

Emerging high-speed networks and powerful end-systems give rise to a new class of applications such as video-on-demand and teleconferencing. Such applications are very demanding on Quality of Service (QoS) because of the isochronous nature of media they are using. To provide QoS support on an end-to-end basis the need for the integration of network, transport and operating services arises. Thus to support the new emerging services end-to-end QoS management is required. This paper deals particularly with negotiation activities for multimedia applications. A two-levels model of negotiation is defined: (1) the service negotiation, and (2) the quality of service negotiation. The service negotiation allows to identify the system components required to support the service functionality while the QoS negotiation allows to reserve the corresponding resources of the identified components to support the requested quality of service. The negotiation model enables to find an optimal system confi..