Article

A method for the automatic generation of test suites from object models

Authors:

Alessandra Cavarra,

Charles Crichton,

Jim DaviesAuthors Info & Claims

SAC '03: Proceedings of the 2003 ACM symposium on Applied computing

Pages 1104 - 1109

https://doi.org/10.1145/952532.952748

Published: 09 March 2003 Publication History

Abstract

This paper explains how object models written in the Unified Modeling Language (UML) can be translated into formal, behavioural descriptions and used as a basis for automatic test generation. The behavioural descriptions are written in a language of communicating state machines: the Intermediate Format (IF). The translation from UML to IF is based upon an earlier formal semantics, written in the Abstract State Machine (ASM) notation. Descriptions written in IF can be automatically explored; the results of these explorations are test trees, ready for input to a variety of testing packages.

References

[1]

E. Börger, A. Cavarra, and E. Riccobene. Modeling the Dynamics of UML State Machines. In Y. Gurevich et al., editor, Abstract State Machines. Theory and Applications, volume 1912 of LNCS 1912, pages 223--241. Springer, 2000.]]

Digital Library

[2]

E. Börger, A. Cavarra, and E. Riccobene. A precise semantics of UML State Machines: making semantic variation points and ambiguities explicit. In G. Luettgen and M. Mendler and F. Maraninchi, editor, Proceedings of Semantic Foundations of Engineering Design Languages, ETAPS 2002, 2002.]]

[3]

M. Bozga, J. Cl. Fernandez, L. Ghirvu, S. Graf, J. P. Krimm, and L. Mounier. IF: An Intermediate Representation and Validation Environment for Timed Asynchronous Systems. In J. M. Wing, J. Woodcock, and J. Davies, editors, Proceedings of FM'99 (Toulouse, France), volume 1708 of LNCS, pages 307--327. Springer, September 1999.]]

Digital Library

[4]

M. Bozga, S. Graf, L. Mounier, I. Ober, J. L. Roux, and D. Vincent. Timed Extensions for SDL. In Proceedings of SDL FORUM'01, LNCS, 2001. to appear.]]

Digital Library

[5]

A. Cavarra. Applying Abstract State Machines to Formalize and Integrate the UML Lightweight Method. PhD thesis, University, of Catania, Italy, 2000.]]

[6]

Rational Software Corporation. Rational rose. June 2001, "http://www.ratin.al.com".]]

[7]

Ibrahim Khalil Ibrahim El-Far. Automated construction of software behavior models. Master's thesis, American University of Beirut, 1995.]]

[8]

M. S. Feather and B. Smith. Automatic generation of test oracles---from pilot studies to application. Automated Software Engineering, 8(1):31--61, January 2001.]]

Digital Library

[9]

Erich Gamma and Kent Beck. Junit: a regression testing framework. www.junit.org.]]

[10]

Gentleware. Poseidon for uml (formerly argouml). June 2001, http://www.gentleware.com.]]

[11]

B. Gregor and V. Petrenko. Protocol testing: review of methods and relevance for software testing, 1994.]]

[12]

I. Gronau, A. Hartman, A. Kirshin, K. Nagin, and S. Olvovsky. A methodology and architecture for automated software testing. http://www.haifa.il.ibm.com/projects/verification/gtcb/papers/gtcbmanda.pdf, 2000.]]

[13]

Object Management Group. Unified modeling language specification, version 1.4. http://www.omg.org/cgi-bin/doc?formal/01-09-67.]]

[14]

David Harel and Eran Gery. Executable object modeling with statecharts. In Proceedings of the 18th International Conference on Software Engineering, pages 246--257. IEEE Computer Society Press, 1996. citeseer.nj.nec.com/article/harel97executable.html.]]

Digital Library

[15]

ITU-T. Recommendation Z.100. Specification and Description Language (SDL). Technical Report Z-100, International Telecommunication Union - Standardization Sector, Genève, November 1999.]]

[16]

T. Jéron, J.-M. Jézéquel, and A. Le Guennec. Validation and test generation for object-oriented distributed software. In IEEE Proc. Parallel and Distributed Software Engineering, PDSE'98, Kyoto, Japan, April 1998.]]

Digital Library

[17]

T. Jéron and P. Morel. Test generation derived from model-checking. In Nicolas Halbwachs and Doron Peled, editors, CAV'99, Trento, Italy, volume 1633 of LNCS, pages 108--122. Springer-Verlag, July 1999.]]

Digital Library

[18]

Minna Kangasluoma. Test case generation from uml state charts. Master's thesis, Helsinki University of Technology, 2000.]]

[19]

UML Modeler. Objecteering. "http://www.softeam.fr/us/produits.htm".]]

[20]

S. Rosaria and Microsoft Corporation H. Robinson, Intelligent Search Test Group. Applying models in your testing process. Information and Software Technology, 42:815--824, 2000.]]

[21]

TogetherSoft. Together control centre. June 2001, "http://www.togethersoft.com".]]

[22]

J. Tretmans. Test generation with inputs, outputs and repetitive quiescence. Software---Concepts and Tools, 17(3):103--120, 1996.]]

Cited By

Chavez HShen W(2013)Formalization of UML Composition in OCLInternational Journal of Software Innovation10.4018/ijsi.20130101031:1(26-40)Online publication date: 1-Jan-2013
https://doi.org/10.4018/ijsi.2013010103
Clark T(2009)Model based functional testing using pattern directed filmstrips2009 ICSE Workshop on Automation of Software Test10.1109/IWAST.2009.5069041(53-61)Online publication date: May-2009
https://doi.org/10.1109/IWAST.2009.5069041

Recommendations

Test ready UML statechart models
SCESM '06: Proceedings of the 2006 international workshop on Scenarios and state machines: models, algorithms, and tools

The dynamic behavior of systems is best described by Finite-state machines. Generation of executable tests from behavioral models such as UML Statecharts offers benefits such as systematic testing and test adequacy. We choose UML Statechart models of ...
Automatic generation of test models and properties from UML models with OCL constraints
OCL '12: Proceedings of the 12th Workshop on OCL and Textual Modelling

Model-Based Testing and Property-Based Testing are two testing methodologies that usually facilitate the automation of the generation of test cases, using either models or properties as basis to derive complete test suites. In doing so, they also ...
Automation of GUI testing using a model-driven approach
AST '06: Proceedings of the 2006 international workshop on Automation of software test

This paper describes an ongoing research on test case generation based on Unified Modeling Language (UML). The described approach builds on and combines existing techniques for data and graph coverage. It first uses the Category-Partition method to ...

Comments

Information & Contributors

Information

Published In

cover image ACM Conferences

SAC '03: Proceedings of the 2003 ACM symposium on Applied computing

March 2003

1268 pages

ISBN:1581136242

DOI:10.1145/952532

Conference Chair:
Gary B. Lamont
Air Force Institute of Technology
,
Program Chairs:
Hisham Haddad
Kennesaw State University
,
George A. Papadopoulos
University of Cyprus, Cyprus
,
Publications Chair:
Brajendra Panda
University of Arkansas

Copyright © 2003 ACM.

Permission to make digital or hard copies of all or part of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for components of this work owned by others than ACM must be honored. Abstracting with credit is permitted. To copy otherwise, or republish, to post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission and/or a fee. Request permissions from [email protected]

Sponsors

SIGAPP: ACM Special Interest Group on Applied Computing

Publisher

Association for Computing Machinery

New York, NY, United States

Publication History

Published: 09 March 2003

Permissions

Request permissions for this article.

Request Permissions

Check for updates

Author Tags

Qualifiers

Article

Conference

SAC03

Sponsor:

SIGAPP

SAC03: ACM Symposium on Applied Computing

March 9 - 12, 2003

Florida, Melbourne

Acceptance Rates

Overall Acceptance Rate 1,650 of 6,669 submissions, 25%

Contributors

Other Metrics

View Article Metrics

Bibliometrics & Citations

Bibliometrics

Article Metrics

2
Total Citations
View Citations
517
Total Downloads

Downloads (Last 12 months)0
Downloads (Last 6 weeks)0

Reflects downloads up to 15 Oct 2024

Other Metrics

View Author Metrics

Citations

Cited By

Chavez HShen W(2013)Formalization of UML Composition in OCLInternational Journal of Software Innovation10.4018/ijsi.20130101031:1(26-40)Online publication date: 1-Jan-2013
https://doi.org/10.4018/ijsi.2013010103
Clark T(2009)Model based functional testing using pattern directed filmstrips2009 ICSE Workshop on Automation of Software Test10.1109/IWAST.2009.5069041(53-61)Online publication date: May-2009
https://doi.org/10.1109/IWAST.2009.5069041

View Options

Get Access

Login options

Check if you have access through your login credentials or your institution to get full access on this article.

Full Access

Get this Publication

View options

PDF

View or Download as a PDF file.

eReader

View online with eReader.

Media

Figures

Other

Tables

View Table of Contents