Gazda, M. and Hierons, R.M. orcid.org/0000-0002-4771-1446 (2025) Model independent refusal trace testing. Science of Computer Programming, 239. 103173. ISSN 0167-6423
Abstract
Software Testing is normally one of the main forms of verification and validation used in software development but it is often manual and so expensive and error prone. One of the proposed solutions to this is to use model-based testing, in which testing is based on a model of how the system should behave. If the model has a formal semantics, then there is potential to automate systematic test generation. In this paper we consider the case where the semantics of the model is a set of refusal traces, also called failure traces. We show how the notions of fundamental refusal and fundamental refusal trace can be used to derive a normalised transition system, which we call an observation transition system (OTS), from the semantics. We then show how, if this OTS has finitely many states, and we are given a bound m, one can produce a corresponding complete test suite: one that is guaranteed to determine correctness as long as the number of states of the OTS defined by the semantics of the system under test has no more than m states. In practice, the choice of value for m might be based on domain knowledge or a cost-benefit analysis. As far as we are aware, this is the first work to show how a finite complete test suite can be derived when the semantics under consideration is a set of refusal traces.
Metadata
Item Type: | Article |
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Authors/Creators: |
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Copyright, Publisher and Additional Information: | © 2024 The Author(s). Published by Elsevier B.V. This is an open access article under the CC BY license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). |
Dates: |
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Institution: | The University of Sheffield |
Academic Units: | The University of Sheffield > Faculty of Engineering (Sheffield) > Department of Computer Science (Sheffield) |
Funding Information: | Funder Grant number ENGINEERING AND PHYSICAL SCIENCE RESEARCH COUNCIL EP/R025134/2 UK Research and Innovation EP/V026801/2 |
Depositing User: | Symplectic Sheffield |
Date Deposited: | 18 Jul 2024 08:51 |
Last Modified: | 09 Aug 2024 15:02 |
Status: | Published |
Publisher: | Elsevier |
Refereed: | Yes |
Identification Number: | 10.1016/j.scico.2024.103173 |
Open Archives Initiative ID (OAI ID): | oai:eprints.whiterose.ac.uk:214702 |