Skip Navigation


The Computer Journal Advance Access originally published online on February 9, 2007
The Computer Journal 2007 50(3):315-331; doi:10.1093/comjnl/bxl070
This Article
Right arrow Full Text
Right arrow Full Text (PDF)
Right arrow All Versions of this Article:
50/3/315    most recent
bxl070v1
Right arrow Alert me when this article is cited
Right arrow Alert me if a correction is posted
Services
Right arrow Email this article to a friend
Right arrow Similar articles in this journal
Right arrow Similar articles in ISI Web of Science
Right arrow Alert me to new issues of the journal
Right arrow Add to My Personal Archive
Right arrow Download to citation manager
Right arrowRequest Permissions
Google Scholar
Right arrow Articles by Kapus-Kolar, M.
Right arrow Search for Related Content
Social Bookmarking
Add to CiteULike   Add to Connotea   Add to Del.icio.us  
What's this?

© The Author 2007. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of The British Computer Society. All rights reserved. For Permissions, please email: journals.permissions@oxfordjournals.org

Testing as Collecting of Evidence: An Integrated Approach to Test Generation for Finite State Machines

Monika Kapus-Kolar*

Jozef Stefan Institute, Ljubljana, Slovenia

* Corresponding author: monika.kapus-kolar{at}ijs.si

Received 16 May 2006; revised 4 October 2006

A new method to generate tests for deterministic implementations of deterministic finite state machines is proposed. The method is generic, taking a wide class of testing strategies as a parameter, and able to support both transition-oriented and fault-model-driven testing. For a given specification machine, it builds a graph encoding the given strategy and then generates a test by solving on the graph a generalization of the Rural Postman Problem. Only the first phase is domain specific and therefore precisely described in the paper. The second phase is considered a responsibility of graph specialists, though we provide guidelines for solving the most commonly encountered special case. The strategy encoding produced in the first phase is such that the second phase automatically handles, in an integrated manner, the following optimization concerns: absolute avoidance of forbidden transitions, maximum avoidance of transitions which are for some reason considered undesirable, subtest choice, subtest ordering and subtest connection, possibly with overlapping. The method accepts multi-criteria transition cost functions. If both its phases are executed precisely, it generates a test optimal with respect to the adopted strategy, and a strategy for generating absolutely optimal tests is also given. For the cases where the complexity of the first phase or of the resulting graph is problematic, guidelines for systematically conducting the phase in an approximate way are provided.

Key Words: Test sequence generation • finite state machine • generic method • generalized Rural Postman Problem


Add to CiteULike CiteULike   Add to Connotea Connotea   Add to Del.icio.us Del.icio.us    What's this?




Disclaimer:
Please note that abstracts for content published before 1996 were created through digital scanning and may therefore not exactly replicate the text of the original print issues. All efforts have been made to ensure accuracy, but the Publisher will not be held responsible for any remaining inaccuracies. If you require any further clarification, please contact our Customer Services Department.