Using Z specifications in category partition testing

Amla, Nina; Ammann, Paul

doi:10.1109/cmpass.1992.235766

Cited by 27 publications

(23 citation statements)

References 3 publications

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“…They have then shifted their attention to the identification process based on formal specifications. Other researchers such as Amla and Ammann (1992), Hierons et al (2003), and Singh et al (1997) have also conducted work in this direction. While we concur with the view that the identification of categories and choices from informal specifications is challenging and cannot be fully automatic, we take the position that research on identification processes for informal specifications is a must, because this type of specification is more commonly accepted by the software industry.…”

Section: Identification Of Categories Choices and Their Relationsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Contributions of tester experience and a checklist guideline to the identification of categories and choices for software testing

et al. 2010

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An early step for most black-box testing methods is to identify a set of categories and choices (or their equivalents) from the specification. The identification is often performed in an ad hoc manner, thus the quality of categories and choices is in doubt. Poorly identified categories and choices will affect the comprehensiveness of test cases. In this paper, we describe several comparative studies using three commercial specifications and discuss the major results. The objectives of our studies are (a) to investigate the differences in the types and amounts of mistakes made between inexperienced and experienced software testers in an ad hoc identification approach and (b) to determine the extent of mistake reduction after discussing the mistakes with the software testers and providing them with an identification checklist.

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Section: Identification Of Categories Choices and Their Relationsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Contributions of tester experience and a checklist guideline to the identification of categories and choices for software testing

et al. 2010

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“…A similar approach is applied in this paper, although the specification graph is much different. The specification graph defined in this paper is based on states in the software system behavior, thus the tests are at the system level instead of for Stocks and Carrington [50,51] and Amla, Ammann, and Offutt [2,3] proposed using a form of domain partitioning to generate test cases. Given a description of an input domain, the idea is to use specifications to partition the input domain into subsets.…”

Section: Model-based Approachesmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The current research literature reports on specific tools for specific formal specification languages [9,12,27,34,47,53,55], manual methods for deriving tests from specifications [2,3,8,22,28], case studies on using specifications to check the output of the software on specifications [23,36,39,50], and formalizations of test specifications [7,16,52,51]. The term specification-based testing is used in the narrow sense of using specifications as a basis for deciding what tests to run on software.…”

Section: Related Workmentioning

confidence: 99%

Generating test data from state‐based specifications

Offutt

Liu

Abdurazik

et al. 2003

Software Testing Verif & Rel

272

159

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“…Formal methods and software testing are two techniques with this purpose. Many researchers have tried to combine these two techniques to take advantage of their most interesting aspects ( [1][2][3][4][5][6][7][8][9][10][11][12][13][14][15][16]). This combination can bring benefits such as reduction of development costs through the application of verification techniques in the initial development phases, when faults are cheaper to be fixed, and automatic generation of tests from formal specifications [17].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

An empirical study of test generation with BETA

2016

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Background: BETA (Bbased testing approach) is a toolsupported approach to generate test cases from Bmethod specifications through the application of input space partitioning and logical coverage criteria. The BETA tool automates the whole process, from the design of abstract test cases to the generation of executable test scripts. Methods: In this paper, we present an empirical study that was performed to evaluate and contribute to the development of BETA. The study evaluated the applicability of BETA on problems with different characteristics and used techniques of code coverage and mutation analysis to measure the quality of the generated test cases. The study was carried out in different rounds, and the results of each round were used as a reference for the improvement of the approach and its supporting tool. Results: These case studies were relevant not only for the evaluation of BETA but also to evaluate how different features affect the usability of the approach and the quality of the test cases and to compare the quality of the test cases generated using different coverage criteria. Conclusions:The results of this study showed that (1) BETAgenerated test scenarios for the different criteria follow theoretical expectations in terms of criteria subsumption; (2) the BETA implementation of the logical criteria generates more efficient test sets regarding code and mutation coverage than the input space partitioning ones; (3) it is important to go beyond the strict requirements of the criteria by adding some additional variation (randomization) of the input data; and (4) the algorithms designed to combine test requirements into test cases need to deal carefully with infeasible (logically unsatisfiable) combinations.

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Using Z specifications in category partition testing

Cited by 27 publications

References 3 publications

Contributions of tester experience and a checklist guideline to the identification of categories and choices for software testing

Contributions of tester experience and a checklist guideline to the identification of categories and choices for software testing

Generating test data from state‐based specifications

An empirical study of test generation with BETA

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