Abstract
Automatic test case generation from protocol standards is a means of selecting high quality test cases efficiently. Recently, International Organization for Standards (ISO) has established a working group for studying the application of Formal Methods in Conformance Testing (FMCT) [5]. One of the primary aims of this group is to enable computer-aided test case generation from protocol standards specified in Formal Description Techniques (FDT) such as Estelle [2], SDL [3], and LOTOS [4]. In this paper, we present a new method for automatically generating test cases for both control flow and data flow aspects of a protocol which is represented as an Extended Finite State Machine (EFSM) as defined in [21].
Keywords
These keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.
A unified method for generating test cases for both control flow and data flow aspects of a protocol represented as an Extended Finite State Machine (EFSM) is presented. Unlike most of the existing methods, the proposed method considers the feasibility of the test cases during their generation itself. In order to reduce the complexity of the feasibility problem without compromising the control flow coverage, a new type of state identification sequence, namely, the Context Independent Unique Sequence (CIUS) is defined. The trans-CIUS-set criterion used in the control flow test case generation is superior to the existing control flow coverage criteria for the EFSM. In order to provide observability, the “all-uses” data flow coverage criterion is extended to what is called the def-use-ob criterion. A two-phase breadth-first search algorithm is designed for generating a set of executable test tours for covering the selected criteria. The approach is also illustrated on an EFSM module of a transport protocol.
This work was done at Concordia University, Montreal, prior to T. Ramalingom joining Bell-Northern
Download to read the full chapter text
Chapter PDF
References
ISO TC97/SC6 8073: Information Processing Systems - Open Systems Interconnection - Connection Oriented Transport Protocol Specification.
ISO/IEC 9074: Information Processing Systems - Open Systems Interconnection - Estelle - A Formal Description Technique Based on an Extended State Transition Model, 1987.
CCITT/SGx/WP3–1, Specification and Description Language, SDL. CCITT Recommendations Z. 100, 1988.
ISO/IEC 8807: Information Processing Systems - Open Systems Interconnection - LOTOS - a Formal Description Technique Based on the Temporal Ordering of Observational Behavior, June 1988.
ISO SC21 WG1 P54: Information Processing Systems - Open Systems Interconnection - Formal Methods in Conformance Testing, Working Document, June 1993.
G. v. Bochmann. Specifications of a simplified transport protocol using different formal description techniques. Computer Networks and ISDN systems,18:335–377, 1989/1990.
G. v. Bochmann, A. Petrenko, and M. Yao. Fault coverage of tests based on finite state models. In 7th International Workshop on Protocol Test Systems, Tokyo, Japan, November 1994.
W. Y. L. Chan, S. T. Vuong, and M. R. Ito. An improved protocol test generation procedure based on UIOs. In ACM SIGCOMM, pages 283–294, 1989.
S. T. Chanson and J. Zhu. A unified approach to protocol test sequence generation. In Proc. IEEE INFOCOM, pages 106–114, 1993.
T. S. Chow. Testing software design modeled by finite state machine. IEEE Tr. Soft. Engg., SE-4(3): 178–187, March 1978.
W. Chun and P. D. Amer. Test case generation for protocols specified in Estelle. In J. Quemada, J. Manas, and E. Vazquez, editors, Formal Description Techniques, III, pages 191–206. Elsevier Science Publishers B. V. ( North-Holland ), 1991.
B. Forghani and B. Sarikaya. Semi-automatic test suite generation from Estelle. IEE/BCS Software Engineering Journal, 7 (4): 295–307, July 1992.
X. Li, T. Higashino, M. Higuchi, and K. Taniguchi. Automatic generation of extended UIO sequences for communication protocols in an EFSM model. In 7th International Workshop on Protocol Test Systems, Tokyo, Japan, November 1994.
R. E. Miller and S. Paul. Generating conformance test sequences for combined control and data flow of communication protocols. In Proc. 12th International Symposium of Protocol Specification, Testing and Verification, 1992.
T Ramalingam. Test case generation and fault diagnosis methods for communication protocols based on FSM and EFSM models. PhD thesis, Concordia University, Montreal, Canada, 1994.
T. Ramalingam, A. Das, and K. Thulasiraman. Fault detection and diagnosis capabilities of test sequence selection methods based on the FSM model. Computer Communications, 18 (2): 113–122, February 1995.
S. Rapps and E. J. Weyuker. Selecting software test data using data flow information. IEEE Tr. Soft. Engg.,SE-11(4):367–375, April 1985.
M. C. Thompson, D. J. Richardson, and L. A. Clarke. An information flow model of fault detection. In Proc. International Symposium on Software Testing and Analysis,pages 182–192, Cambridge, USA, June 1993. ACM press.
K. J. Turner, editor. Using formal description techniques. John Wiley & Sons, Chichester, England, 1993.
H. Ural and A. Williams. Test generation by exposing control and data dependencies within system specifications in SDL. In Proc. FORTE’93, October 1993.
H. Ural and B. Yang. A test sequence selection method for protocol testing. IEEE Tr. Comm., 39 (4): 514–523, April 1991.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 1996 Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Ramalingom, T., Das, A., Thulasiraman, K. (1996). A Unified Test Case Generation Method for the EFSM Model Using Context Independent Unique Sequences. In: Cavalli, A., Budkowski, S. (eds) Protocol Test Systems VIII. IFIP — The International Federation for Information Processing. Springer, Boston, MA. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-0-387-34988-6_18
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-0-387-34988-6_18
Publisher Name: Springer, Boston, MA
Print ISBN: 978-1-4757-6312-6
Online ISBN: 978-0-387-34988-6
eBook Packages: Springer Book Archive