Motorola SpecNL: A Hybrid System to Generate NL Descriptions from Test Case Specifications

Abstract

SpecNL is a tool that generates software test cases descriptions in natural language from test case specifications. The main aim is to help test engineers to execute the manual tests. This tool is part of a project to automate software test for mobile phone applications. SpecNL is a hybrid system (from the Natural Language Generation viewpoint), since it combines linguistic information and output templates in the generation task.Experiments with the implemented prototype revealed satisfactory results. This is an original and innovative application of NLG in the Software Engineering area.

An Estimation Model for Test Execution Effort

“…In addition, all the information required for using the model, such as the list of characteristics, guidelines and test productivity can be stored in a database. Actually, the CNL grammar and lexicon is also stored in the database [18].…”

“…The CNL used in this empirical study was defined in [18], we just needed to reuse its definition. To define the list of characteristics, we invited 6 experienced testers.…”

Compositional Verification of Input-Output Conformance via CSP Refinement Checking

“…Application requirements are detailed in use cases; each use case is presented in the form of a tabular template, where each line is split into user action, system state (condition) and system response. The (English) text in each field is written in a controlled natural language (CNL) [23], so that the entire table can be automatically translated into a CSP test model [6].…”