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Deriving Tailored UML Interaction Models from Scenario-Based Runtime Tests

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Software Technologies (ICSOFT 2015)

Part of the book series: Communications in Computer and Information Science ((CCIS,volume 586))

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Abstract

Documenting system behavior explicitly using graphical models (e.g. UML activity or sequence diagrams) facilitates communication about and understanding of software systems during development and maintenance tasks. Creating graphical models manually is a time-consuming and often error-prone task. Deriving models from system-execution traces, however, suffers from resulting model sizes which render the models unmanageable for humans. This paper describes an approach for deriving behavior documentation from runtime tests in terms of UML interaction models. Key to our approach is leveraging the structure of scenario-based runtime tests to render the resulting interaction models and diagrams tailorable by humans for a given task. Each derived model represents a particular view on the test-execution trace. This way, one can benefit from tailored graphical models while controlling the model size. The approach builds on conceptual mappings (transformation rules) between a test-execution trace metamodel and the UML2 metamodel. In addition, we provide means to turn selected details of test specifications and of testing environment (i.e. test parts and call scopes) into views on the test-execution trace (scenario-test viewpoint). A prototype implementation called KaleidoScope based on a software-testing framework (STORM) and model transformations (Eclipse M2M/QVTo) is available.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    Available for download from our website [14].

  2. 2.

    For the purposes of this paper, a trace is defined as a sequence of interactions between the structural elements of the system under test (SUT), see e.g. [38].

  3. 3.

    The process described so far is supported by our KaleidoScope tool [14].

  4. 4.

    The number of views computes as follows: There are \((2^3-1) \) non-empty combinations of the three feature-call scopes (SUT internal, STF internal, STF to SUT) times the \((2^{11}-1)\) non-empty combinations of at least 11 individual test parts (e.g. setup of test case, test body of test scenario).

  5. 5.

    The default value seq provides weak sequencing, i.e. ordering of fragments just along lifelines, which means that occurrences on different lifelines from different operands may come in any order [27].

  6. 6.

    Available for download from our website [14].

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Institute for Information Systems and New Media, Vienna University of Economics and Business (WU), Vienna, Austria

    Thorsten Haendler, Stefan Sobernig & Mark Strembeck

Authors
  1. Thorsten Haendler
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  2. Stefan Sobernig
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  3. Mark Strembeck
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Thorsten Haendler .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. University of Haute Alsace, Mulhouse, France

    Pascal Lorenz

  2. Universidade da Coimbra, Coimbra, Portugal

    Jorge Cardoso

  3. Macquarie University, Sydney, Australia

    Leszek A. Maciaszek

  4. Information Systems Group, Enschede, The Netherlands

    Marten van Sinderen

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Appendix

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Haendler, T., Sobernig, S., Strembeck, M. (2016). Deriving Tailored UML Interaction Models from Scenario-Based Runtime Tests. In: Lorenz, P., Cardoso, J., Maciaszek, L., van Sinderen, M. (eds) Software Technologies. ICSOFT 2015. Communications in Computer and Information Science, vol 586. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-30142-6_18

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-30142-6_18

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