With advanced computer technology, systems are getting larger to fulfill more complicated tasks, however, they are also becoming less reliable. Consequently, testing is an indispensable part of system design and implementation; yet it has proved to be a formidable task for complex systems. This motivates the study of testing finite state machines to ensure the correct functioning of systems and to discover aspects of their behavior. A finite state machine contains a finite number of states and produces outputs on state transitions after receiving inputs. Finite state machines are widely used to model systems in diverse areas, including sequential circuits, certain types of programs, and, more recently, communication protocols. In a testing problem we have a machine about which we lack some information; we would like to deduce this information by providing a sequence of inputs to the machine and observing the outputs produced. Because of its practical importance and theoretical intere...

Abstract. Compositional verification is a promising approach to addressing the state explosion problem associated with model checking. One compositional technique advocates proving properties of a system by checking properties of its components in an assume-guarantee style. However, the application of this technique is difficult because it involves non-trivial human input. This paper presents a novel framework for performing assume-guarantee reasoning in an incremental and fully automated fashion. To check a component against a property, our approach generates assumptions that the environment needs to satisfy for the property to hold. These assumptions are then discharged on the rest of the system. Assumptions are computed by a learning algorithm. They are initially approximate, but become gradually more precise by means of counterexamples obtained by model checking the component and its environment, alternately. This iterative process may at any stage conclude that the property is either true or false in the system. We have implemented our approach in the LTSA tool and applied it to a NASA system.

We consider the case where inconsistencies are present between a system and its corresponding model, used for automatic verification. Such inconsistencies can be the result of modeling errors or recent modifications of the system. Despite such discrepancies we can still attempt to perform automatic verification. In fact, as we show, we can sometimes exploit the verification results to assist in automatically learning the required updates to the model. In a related previous work, we have suggested the idea of black box checking, where verification starts without any model, and the model is obtained while repeated verification attempts are performed. Under the current assumptions, an existing inaccurate (but not completely obsolete) model is used to expedite the updates. We use techniques from black box testing and machine learning.

AbstractÐThe widespread use of GUIs for interacting with software is leading to the construction of more and more complex GUIs. With the growing complexity come challenges in testing the correctness of a GUI and its underlying software. We present a new technique to automatically generate test cases for GUIs that exploits planning, a well-developed and used technique in artificial intelligence. Given a set of operators, an initial state, and a goal state, a planner produces a sequence of the operators that will transform the initial state to the goal state. Our test case generation technique enables efficient application of planning by first creating a hierarchical model of a GUI based on its structure. The GUI model consists of hierarchical planning operators representing the possible events in the GUI. The test designer defines the preconditions and effects of the hierarchical operators, which are input into a plan-generation system. The test designer also creates scenarios that represent typical initial and goal states for a GUI user. The planner then generates plans representing sequences of GUI interactions that a user might employ to reach the goal state from the initial state. We implemented our test case generation system, called Planning Assisted Tester for grapHical user interface Systems (PATHS) and experimentally evaluated its practicality and effectiveness. We describe a prototype implementation of PATHS and report on the results of controlled experiments to generate test cases for Microsoft's WordPad. Index TermsÐSoftware testing, GUI testing, application of AI planning, GUI regression testing, automated test case generation, generating alternative plans. 1

Abstract. Researchers and practitioners are still trying to find effective ways to model and test Web applications. This paper proposes a system-level testing technique that combines test generation based on finite state machines with constraints. We use a hierarchical approach to model potentially large Web applications. The approach builds hierarchies of Finite State Machines (FSMs) that model subsystems of the Web applications, and then generates test requirements as subsequences of states in the FSMs. These subsequences are then combined and refined to form complete executable tests. The constraints are used to select a reduced set of inputs with the goal of reducing the state space explosion otherwise inherent in using FSMs. The paper illustrates the technique with a running example of a Web-based course student information system and introduces a prototype implementation to support the technique.

Although the majority of software testing in industry is conducted at the system level, most formal research has focused on the unit level. As a result, most system level testing techniques are only described informally. This paper presents formal testing criteria for system level testing that are based on formal specifications of the software. Software testing can only be formalized and quantified when a solid basis for test generation can be defined. Formal specifications represent a significant opportunity for testing because they precisely describe what functions the software is supposed to provide in a form that can be automatically manipulated. This paper presents general criteria for generating test inputs from state-based specifications. The criteria include techniques for generating tests at several levels of abstraction for specifications (transition predicates, transitions, pairs of transitions and sequences of transitions). These techniques provide coverage criteria that are based on the specifications, and are made up of several parts, including test prefixes that contain inputs necessary to put the software into the appropriate state for the test values. The test generation process includes several steps for transforming specifications to tests. These criteria have been applied to a case study to compare their ability to detect seeded faults.

We propose a new framework for black-box conformance testing of real-time systems. The framework is based on the model of partially-observable, non-deterministic timed automata. We argue that partial observability and non-determinism are essential features for ease of modeling, expressiveness and implementability. The framework allows the user to define, through appropriate modeling, assumptions on the environment of the system under test (SUT) as well as on the interface between the tester and the SUT. We consider two types of tests: analog-clock tests and digital-clock tests. Our algorithm to generate analogclock tests is based on an on-the-fly determinization of the specification automaton during the execution of the test, which in turn relies on reachability computations. The latter can sometimes be costly, thus problematic, since the tester must quickly react to the actions of the system under test. Therefore, we provide techniques which allow analog-clock testers to be represented as deterministic timed automata, thus minimizing the reaction time to a simple state jump. We provide algorithms for static or on-the-fly generation of digitalclock tests. These tests measure time only with finite-precision, digital clocks, another essential condition for implementability. We also propose a technique for location, edge and state coverage of the specification, by reducing the problem to covering a symbolic reachability graph. This avoids having to generate too many tests. We report on a prototype tool TTG and two case studies: a lighting device and the Bounded Retransmission Protocol. Experimental results obtained by applying TTG on the Bounded Retransmission Protocol show that only a few tests suffice to cover thousands of reachable symbolic states in the specification.

This chapter presents principles and techniques for modelbased black-box conformance testing of real-time systems using the Uppaal model-checking tool-suite. The basis for testing is given as a network of concurrent timed automata specified by the test engineer. Relativized input/output conformance serves as the notion of implementation correctness, essentially timed trace inclusion taking environment assumptions into account. Test cases can be generated offline and later executed, or they can be generated and executed online. For both approaches this chapter discusses how to specify test objectives, derive test sequences, apply these to the system under test, and assign a verdict.

Even if access to the internal structure of the tested system is possible, it is not always a good idea to use it when performing tests, as this may lead to a bias in the testing process. Furthermore, the

... This thesis develops a unified solution to the GUI testing problem with the particular goals of automation and integration of tools and techniques used in various phases of GUI testing. These goals are accomplished by developing a GUI testing framework with a GUI model as its central component. For efficiency and scalability, a GUI is represented as a hierarchy of components, each used as a basic unit of testing. The framework also includes a test coverage evaluator, test case generator, test oracle, test executor, and regression tester. The test coverage evaluator employs hierarchical, event-based coverage criteria to automatically specify what to test in a GUI and to determine whether the test suite has adequately tested the GUI. The test case generator employs plan generation techniques from artificial intelligence to automatically generate a test suite. A test executor automatically executes all the test cases on the GUI. As test cases are being executed, a test oracle automatically determines the correctness of the GUI. The test oracle employs a model of the expected state of the GUI in terms of its constituent objects and their properties. After changes are made to a GUI, a regression tester partitions the original GUI test suite into valid test cases that represent correct input/output for the modified GUI and invalid test cases that no longer represent correct input/output. The regression tester employs a new technique to reuse some of the invalid test cases by repairing them.