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When architecting dependable systems, in addition to improving system dependability by means of construction (fault-tolerant and redundant mechanisms, for instance), it is also important to evaluate, and thereby confirm, system dependability. There are many different approaches for evaluating system dependability, and testing always has been an important one.Previous work on software architecture testing has shown it is possible to apply conformance-testing techniques to yield confidence that the behavior of an implemented system conforms to the expected behavior of the software architecture, specified with Architecture Description Languages.In this work, we explore how regression testing can be systematically applied at the software architecture level in order to reduce the cost of retesting modified systems, and also to assess the regression testability of the evolved system. We consider assessing both "top-down" and "bottom-up" evolution, i.e., whether a slightly modified implementation conforms to the initial architecture, and whether the (modified) implementation conforms an evolved architecture. A better understanding on how regression testing can be applied at the software architecture level will help us to assess and identify architecture with higher dependability.

Abstract. The topic of software architecture (SA) based testing has recently raised some interest. Recent work on the topic has used the SA as a reference model for code conformance testing, to check if an implementation fulfills (conforms to) its specification at the SA level. In this context, on previous papers, we have analyzed: i) how suitable test cases can be "selected" from the SA specification and ii) how they may be "refined" into concrete tests executable at the code level. While the selection stage has been done systematically, the refinement step has been left to be done manually, based on the software engineer knowledge on how to map "abstract values of the specification to the concrete values of the implementation". In this paper, we extend previous approaches, by providing a systematic way to perform the refinement step. We show how choosing a specific architectural style, which supports implementation and facilitates the mapping among SA-based and code-based test cases, a completely systematic SA-based testing approach can be delivered.

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