An Abstraction Technique for Testing Decomposable Systems by Model Checking

Abstract

Abstract. Test generation by model checking exploits the capability of model checkers to return counterexamples upon property violations. The approach suffers from the state explosion problem of model checking. For property verification, different abstraction techniques have been proposed to tackle this problem. However, such techniques are not always suitable for test generation. In this paper we focus on Decomposable by Dependency Asynchronous Parallel (DDAP) systems, composed by several subsystems running in parallel and connected together in a way that the inputs of one subsystem are provided by another subsystem. We propose a test generation approach for DDAP systems based on a decompositional abstraction that considers one subsystem at a time. It builds tests for the single subsystems and combines them later in order to obtain a global system test. Such approach avoids the exponential increase of the test generation time and memory consumption. The approach is proved to be sound, but not complete.

Decomposition-Based Approach for Model-Based Test Generation

“…Regarding abstraction techniques for test generation, in [38], the approach SMART is presented. to build the test: in [39], the test for the whole system is built by concatenating the tests of the interleaving subsystems, while here the final test is the merge of the tests of the parallel subsystems. We proposed a similar approach in [40], [41] for sequential nets of Abstract State Machines (ASMs), which are systems composed of a set of ASMs where only one ASM is active at a time.…”

Improving model-based test generation by model decomposition

“…The approach we presented in [8] shares with this work the idea of exploiting system decomposition to tackle the limitation of model-based test generation by model checking. It presents a technique to build test for Decomposable by Dependency Asynchronous Parallel (DDAP) systems, which are systems composed of several subsystems running in parallel and connected together in a way that the inputs of one subsystem are provided by another subsystem.…”

“…It presents a technique to build test for Decomposable by Dependency Asynchronous Parallel (DDAP) systems, which are systems composed of several subsystems running in parallel and connected together in a way that the inputs of one subsystem are provided by another subsystem. Apart sharing the philosophical idea of tacking a problem by decomposing it into smaller problems, the approaches differ (1) on the way a system is decomposed, (2) on the class of obtained dependent subsystems (that in [8] are interleaving subsystems, while here we have parallel subsystems), and (3) on the way a test for the whole system is built on the base of the tests for the subsystems (concatenation of tests in [8], merging of tests here).…”

“…In this paper we present a technique for system decomposition and a test generation approach where tests for the whole system are built as combination of tests generated for the subsystems. The idea was inspired from our previous work in [8], although the techniques we propose here for model decomposition and test building are different. A comparison is discussed in Sect.…”