A random testing approach using pushdown automata

Abstract

International audienceSince finite automata are in general strong abstractions of systems, many test cases which are automata traces generated uniformly at ran-dom, may be un-concretizable. This paper proposes a method extending the abovementioned testing approach to pushdown systems providing finer abstractions. Using combinatorial techniques guarantees the uniformity of generated traces. In addition, to improve the quality of the test suites, the combination of coverage criteria with random testing is investigated. The method is illustrated within both structural and model-based testing contexts

An Approximation-Based Approach for the Random Exploration of Large Models

“…In [9] the authors have proposed an improved approach to explore the models at random. This technique has been extended to pushdown models [15,11] and to grammar-based systems [10].…”

“…And it is significantly faster for large automata. For instance, for Consistency3, while the Exact approach requires more than 11 are needed for Approx 1000 (with r = 0). In all cases, the best compromise seems to use Approx 10 with r = 10: the computation time is strongly better, and the quality of the biased approach is similar to the Exact approach, except for Consistency.…”

Covering both stack and states while testing push-down systems

“…A method of biased random grammar-based testing for covering all non-terminals symbols of a grammar is proposed in [12]. Random testing on push-down automata are investigated in [13] and [14] Reachability in Push-down Automata. The reachability problem is the problem of deciding whether an automaton can reach a particular location from an initial location.…”

“…Remove from C all the pairs visited by π. [14]. The tested C-implementation of the shunting yard algorithm is also given in [14] and comes from wikipedia.…”

“…[14]. The tested C-implementation of the shunting yard algorithm is also given in [14] and comes from wikipedia. Figure 6 illustrates this N P DA that takes into account only the " + " and " * " operators.…”