B model animation for external verification

Waeselynck, Hélène; Behnia, Salimeh

doi:10.1109/icfem.1998.730568

Cited by 17 publications

(18 citation statements)

References 13 publications

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“…This paper focuses on the definition of test criteria for B models. It extends previous work establishing a validation framework for the B development process [13]. The aim is to track down specification faults originating from a misunderstanding of the functional requirements, or from the failure to adequately express an understood requirement.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 71%

“…Therefore, the coverage of this subgraph must be given an operational interpretation. We adopt the operational interpretation that is based on the notion of correct executable interpretation of model-based specifications investigated for Z notation in [6], also discussed in the context of testing B models via animation [13]. It is argued that a correct interpretation of a non-deterministic specification should offer many alternative outputs.…”

Section: 3 Structural Coverage Of Generalized Substitutionsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…However, in our case, the search for such criteria arises in the context of on-going research on the validation of the formal models themselves [4,12,13].…”

Section: Purpose Of a Uniform Testing Frameworkmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The B formal development process can be seen as a series of stages where more and more concrete models of the application are built, the final code being just a compiled version of the most concrete one. In order to validate these models, we have defined a uniform testing framework, irrespective of the development stage and of whether the test inputs are supplied to the final code or to the formal models [13]. Within the uniform framework, we wish to be equipped with coverage criteria that can be applied not only to the most abstract model (i.e.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Test Criteria Definition for B Models

Behnia¹,

Waeselynck²

1999

FM’99 — Formal Methods

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Abstract. Test criteria are defined in order to guide the selection of subsets of the input domain to be covered during testing. A unification of two categories of test criteria, program based and specification based, i s presented. Such a unification is possible for B models because the specification, refinement concepts and implementation are captured in one notation. The notion of control flow graph is extended to handle the abstract constructs of the generalized substitution language, and a link between the coverage of the graph and the coverage of the before-after predicate i s established. A set of criteria for the coverage of the control flow graph i s proposed. These criteria are partially ordered according to their stringency, so that the coverage strategy may be tuned according to the complexity of the operation under test. IntroductionTesting is a partial verification technique that consists in exercising a target piece of software by supplying it with a sample of input values. Since exhaustive testing is generally not tractable, the tester is faced with the problem of selecting a proper subset of the input domain. The selection is guided by test criteria that specify a set of elements to be covered during testing. This paper focuses on the definition of test criteria for B models. It extends previous work establishing a validation framework for the B development process [13]. The aim is to track down specification faults originating from a misunderstanding of the functional requirements, or from the failure to adequately express an understood requirement. The B formal development process can be seen as a series of stages where more and more concrete models of the application are built, the final code being just a compiled version of the most concrete one. In order to validate these models, we have defined a uniform testing framework, irrespective of the development stage and of whether the test inputs are supplied to the final code or to the formal models [13]. Within the uniform framework, we wish to be equipped with coverage criteria that can be applied not only to the most abstract model (i.e. before refinement), but also to any intermediate model obtained during development. This must be so because, in typical B projects, the smallest meaningful model with respect to the functional requirements is likely to involve a few steps of refinement (see e.g. the modeling approach adopted

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Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 71%

Section: 3 Structural Coverage Of Generalized Substitutionsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…However, in our case, the search for such criteria arises in the context of on-going research on the validation of the formal models themselves [4,12,13].…”

Section: Purpose Of a Uniform Testing Frameworkmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

See 2 more Smart Citations

Test Criteria Definition for B Models

Behnia¹,

Waeselynck²

1999

FM’99 — Formal Methods

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“…However, Jaza is less flexible than Possum, and its user interface is more difficult to use. The B-Model animator [Waeselynck and Behnia 1998] is used in the B formal development process [Treharne et al 1996]. It is used to test specifications written in B's model-oriented specification language.…”

Section: Specification Testingmentioning

confidence: 99%

A framework and tool support for the systematic testing of model-based specifications

Miller

Strooper

2003

ACM Trans. Softw. Eng. Methodol.

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Formal specifications can precisely and unambiguously define the required behaviour of a software system or component. However, formal specifications are complex artifacts that need to be verified to ensure that they are consistent and complete, and validated against the requirements. Current specification testing or animation tools exist to assist with this by allowing the specifier to interpret or execute the specification. However, currently little is known about how to do this effectively.This paper presents a framework and tool support for the systematic testing of formal, modelbased specifications. Several important generic properties that should be satisfied by model-based specifications are first identified. Following the idea of mutation analysis, we then use variants or mutants of the specification to check that these properties are satisfied. The framework also allows the specifier to test application-specific properties. All properties are tested for a range of states that are defined by the tester in the form of a testgraph, which is a directed graph that partially models the states and transitions of the specification being tested. Tool support is provided for the generation of the mutants, for automatically traversing the testgraph and executing the test cases, and for reporting any errors. The framework is demonstrated on a small specification and its application to three larger specifications is discussed. Experience indicates that the framework can be used effectively to test small to medium-sized specifications and that it can reveal a significant number of problems in these specifications.

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A case study in model‐based testing of specifications and implementations

Miller

Strooper

2011

Software Testing Verif & Rel

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SUMMARY Despite the existence of a number of animation tools for a variety of languages, methods for employing these tools for specification testing have not been adequately explored. Similarly, despite the close correspondence between specification testing and implementation testing, the two processes are often treated independently, and relatively little investigation has been performed to explore their relationship. This paper presents the results of applying a framework and method for the systematic testing of specifications and their implementations. This framework exploits the close correspondence between specification testing and implementation testing. The framework is evaluated on a sizable case study of the Global System for Mobile Communications 11.11 Standard, which has been developed towards use in a commercial application. The evaluation demonstrates that the framework is of similar cost‐effectiveness to the BZ‐Testing‐Tools framework and more cost‐effective than manual testing. A mutation analysis detected more than 95% of non‐equivalent specification and implementation mutants. Copyright © 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

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B model animation for external verification

Cited by 17 publications

References 13 publications

Test Criteria Definition for B Models

Test Criteria Definition for B Models

A framework and tool support for the systematic testing of model-based specifications

A case study in model‐based testing of specifications and implementations

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