Test generation for intelligent networks using model checking

Abstract

Abstract. We study the use of model checking techniques for the generation of test sequences. Given a formal model of the system to be tested, one can formulate test purposes. A model checker then derives test sequences that fulfill these test purposes. The method is demonstrated by applying it to a specification of an Intelligent Network with two features.

Testing with model checkers: a survey

“…As initially proposed by Engels et al [2] and implemented in several different approaches (see Section 6), an alternative to converting test purposes to never-claims is to introduce deliberate errors in the model. The details of such an approach are discussed in Section 6; but with hindsight of this we refine the definition of a test case.…”

“…While manual specification of test purposes as proposed by Engels et al [2] can lead to efficient test cases, it is usually advantageous to systematically create complete test sets according to some test objective. It is difficult to ensure complete coverage of all possible system behaviors with manually specified test purposes.…”

“…A suitable test case execution framework can extract from this the test data, and also the expected results (i.e., test oracle). Early work on testing with model checkers required manually specified test purposes to either formulate negated as never-claims [2], or to partition the execution tree [1]. Later, many different techniques were proposed to systematically and automatically derive complete sets of test cases.…”

“…Automation is necessary, because manual testing takes a lot of effort and is error prone. Callahan et al [1] and Engels et al [2] initially proposed the use of model checkers for the automated generation of test cases.…”

Testing Systems of Concurrent Black-Boxes—An Automata-Theoretic and Decompositional Approach

“…Most work (e.g., [6,10,13]) stems from the spirit of specification-based testing, and utilizes model-checkers' capabilities of generating counter-examples from a system's specification to produce test-cases against an implementation. This approach typically works at the unit level and lacks a "control" over the generated test-cases, since, unlike our technique, it does not have an overall and analytical characterization over all the useful (i.e., has the potential to recover a global bad behavior) test sequences.…”