A test case generation approach for conformance testing of SDL systems

Abstract

This paper presents an approach for automatic executable test case and test sequence generation for a protocol modeled by an SDL system. Our methodology uses a unified method which tests an Extended Finite State Machine (EFSM) based system by using control and data flow techniques. To test an SDL system, it extracts an EFSM from each process then the system is tested by incrementally computing a partial product for each EFSM C, taking into account only transitions which influence (or are influenced by) C, and generating test cases for it. This process ends when the coverage achieved by the generated test cases is satisfactory or when the partial products for all EFSMs are tested. Experimental results show that this method can be applied to systems of practical size.

Multi-paradigm Models as Source for Automated Test Construction

“…The most part of methods based on (C)(E)FSM models provide construction of test sequence able to guarantee the conformance between a model and an implementation successfully tested in such a way. These methods and their derivatives are used to construct test on the base of formal specifications written in SDL [36], Estelle [37,38], LOTOS [39], or represented as Statecharts [40].…”

Modeling and Testing of Network Protocols with Parallel State Machines

“…It had been widely used in many following studies. Bourhfir et al [11] proposed a test selection technique for CEFSMs. They computed partial products of each pair of machines instead of complete reachability graph of the whole system.…”

Validation of SDL specifications using EFSM-based test generation

“…During the extraction, FEX uses an approach to partially unfold variables of enumerated types and incorporates the enabling conditions as part of the corresponding FSM inputs. Although FEX was originally built to extract an FSM from an SDL specification, with modifications it can also be used to extract the corresponding EFSM [3]. When compared with our TGSP tool, FEX suffers from two major drawbacks.…”

“…This reduces the compatibility and interoperability of FEX with other applications. In particular, the EFSMs from FEX can only be directly used by the specific test generation method described in [3], which will be discussed later. TGSP has no such problem as it can represent EFSMs in the XML format which can be easily converted into different formats using a standard XML parser.…”

“…Bourhfir et al [3] proposed a test selection technique for communication protocols represented by an SDL specification. For each individual EFSM from an SDL process, they computed a so-called partial product, which is similar to a reachability graph.…”