Tool support for the Test Template Framework

Abstract

SUMMARY This paper describes tool support that has been implemented for the Test Template Framework (TTF). The TTF is a model‐based testing (MBT) method that is especially well suited for unit testing from Z specifications. Although the TTF is a sound MBT method and it has been widely referenced since its first publication, attention in recent years has decayed. In fact, some have argued that generating abstract test cases following the TTF is a manual task requiring its users to perform complex predicate manipulations. This paper shows that these observations are dubious by describing Fastest, a tool that implements solutions for all these issues and, according to many experiments, produces abstract test cases for more than 80% of the satisfiable test specifications. Furthermore, it is claimed that Fastest fulfils the needs of the Z user community regarding MBT tools, which is supported with a range of case studies. Copyright © 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Integration Testing in the Test Template Framework

“…For example, users must generate test cases for InsertAndSort 1 and Sort 1 but not for Input 1 and InList . In fact, test cases covering the functionality specified in Input 1 and InList will be generated as part of the test cases generated from InsertAndSort 1 [8]. -Let A and B be Z schemas describing the specification of subroutines P and Q, respectively-we will use this naming convention across the paper.…”

“…The TTF is applied to elements belonging to U 0 as it is [8]. If P ∈ U 1 , then its specification is A = SE(B , A 1 , . .…”

“…This is why we say that the TTF generates unit tests. Recently the TTF was automated roughly to the same degree of other MBT methods by a tool called Fastest [8]. This makes the TTF and Fastest appealing options for unit testing within the Z community.…”

“…In this section we present just the main concepts of the TTF and Fastest; for deeper presentations consult [25,8,9]. Fastest generates test cases for each operation schema selected by the user in a Z model.…”

“…Some tactics are: disjunctive normal form (DNF), standard partitions (SP), free types (FT), etc. [8,9]. After a testing tactic is applied to A VIS a family of test conditions 2 is obtained.…”