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...

We give an algorithm that derives a finite state machine (FSM) from a given abstract state machine (ASM) specification. This allows us to integrate ASM specs with the existing tools for test case generation from FSMs. ASM specs are executable but have typically too many, often infinitely many states. We group ASM states into finitely many hyperstates which are the nodes of the FSM. The links of the FSM are induced by the ASM state transitions.

Here, the method proposed in [13] for constructing minimal-length checking sequences based on distinguishing sequences is improved. The improvement is based on optimizations of the state recognition sequences and their use in constructing test segments. It is shown that the proposed improvement further reduces the length of checking sequences produced from minimal, completely specified, and deterministic finite state machines. Index Terms---Finite state machine, checking sequence, test minimization, distinguishing sequence. # 1

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

We study the problem of uniquely identifying the initial state of a given finite-state machine from among a set of possible choices, based on the input-output behavior. Equivalently, given a set of machines, the problem is to design a test that distinguishes among them. We consider nondeterministic machines as well as probabilistic machines. In both cases, we show that it is Pspace-complete to decide whether there is a preset distinguishing strategy (i.e. a sequence of inputs fixed in advance), and it is Exptime-complete to decide whether there is an adaptive distinguishing strategy (i.e. when the next input can be chosen based on the outputs observed so far). The probabilistic testing is closely related to probabilistic games, or Markov Decision Processes, with incomplete information. We also provide optimal bounds for deciding whether such games have strategies winning with probability 1. 1 Introduction Finite-state machines have been widely used to model systems in diverse areas o...

In this paper we demonstrate that data flow analysis is an effective approach for verifying requirements of communication protocols. Communication protocols are responsible for establishing the communication patterns between different processes within a distributed computer system. Data flow analysis is a static analysis method for increasing confidence in the correctness of software systems by automatically verifying that a given software artifact (e.g., design or code) must behave consistently with a specified requirement. In this case study, we apply the FLAVERS data flow analysis tool to pseudocode designs of the three way handshake connection establishment protocol and of the alternating bit protocol and prove that the behavior of the pseudocode is consistent with protocol behavioral requirement specifications. In addition, we show how assumptions about the environment in which a software system is executed can be incorporated into the analysis, using message losses as an...

We present work on a tool environment for modelbased testing with the Abstract State Machine Language (AsmL). Our environment supports semi-automatic parameter generation, call sequence generation and conformance testing. We outline the usage of the environment by an example, discuss its underlying technologies, and report on some applications conducted in the Microsoft environment. 1

Testing is a trade-off between increased confidence in the correctness of the implementation under test and constraints on the amount of time and effort that can be spent in testing. Therefore, the coverage, or adequacy of the test suite, becomes a very important issue. In this paper, we analyze basic ideas underlying the techniques for fault coverage analysis and assurance mainly developed in the context of protocol conformance testing based on finite state models. Special attention is paid to parameters which determine the testability of a given specification and influence the length of a test suite which guarantees complete fault coverage. We also point out certain issues which need further study. 1. INTRODUCTION Testing is a critical phase in the development life cycle for any hardware and software system, and in particular for communication systems for which it ensures the conformance to the relevant standards and compatibility or interoperability with other systems. Testing con...

In order to test the control portion of communication software, specifications are usually first abstracted to state machines, then test cases are generated from the resulting machines. The state machines obtained from the specification are often both partially-specified and nondeterministic. We come out with a method of generating test suites for the software that is modeled by partially-specified nondeterministic finite state machines (PNFSMs). On the basis of intuitive notions, a conformance relation, called quasi-equivalence, is introduced for such machines, which serves as a guide to test generation. Our method is also applicable to completely-specified deterministic machines, partially-specified deterministic machines, and completely-specified nondeterministic machines, which are typical classes of PNFSMs. When applied to such classes of machines, this method usually yields smaller test suites with full fault coverage for each class of machines than the existing methods for the ...

This paper deals with testing of nondeterministic software systems. We assume that a model of the nondeterministic system is given by a directed graph with two kind of vertices: states and choice points. Choice points represent the nondeterministic behaviour of the implementation under test (IUT). Edges represent transitions. They have costs and probabilities. Test case generation in this setting amounts to generation of a game strategy. The two players are the testing tool (TT) and the IUT. The game explores the graph. The TT leads the IUT by selecting an edge at the state vertices. At the choice points the control goes to the IUT. A game strategy decides which edge should be taken by the TT in each state. This paper presents three novel algorithms 1) to determine an optimal strategy for the bounded reachability game, where optimality means maximizing the probability to reach any of the given final states from a given start state while at the same time minimizing the costs of traversal; 2) to determine a winning strategy for the bounded reachability game, which guarantees that given final vertices are reached, regardless how the IUT reacts; 3) to determine a fast converging edge covering strategy, which guarantees that the probability to cover all edges quickly converges to 1 if TT follows the strategy.