Automated test case generation for reactive software systems based on environment models

• Main Author: Imanian, James A.
• Other Authors: Auguston, Mikhail
• Format: Others
• Published: Monterey, California. Naval Postgraduate School 2012
• Subjects: Computer software; Testing; Validation; Verification
• Online Access: http://hdl.handle.net/10945/2131

The goal of software testing is to expose as many faults as possible. Often one can increase the number of faults detected by running large amounts of test cases, therefore the ability to automatically generate applicable test cases for a System Under Test (SUT), would be a valuable tool. In this thesis an attributed event grammar is designed and used to build a model that describes the environment a SUT must operate in. This event grammar captures events, their precedence or inclusion relation to other events, and attributes of the events. An event is defined as an observable action that has a distinct beginning and end. The high level environment model is then used by a test generator to produce an event trace from which input for the SUT is extracted. Thousands of event traces can be generated. For reactive systems the event trace will have the appropriate time delays between inputs. The feasibility of this approach is proven by implementing a prototype of an automated test generator based on environment models.