Detail

SATEL – A Test Intention Language for Object Oriented Specifications of Reactive Systems

In this talk we will address the problem of generating test cases from a software specification. In particular we will study model based testing from specifications written in the CO-OPN (Concurrent Object-Oriented Petri Nets) language. CO-OPN is a specification formalism based on Algebraic Petri Nets extended by Object-Orientation and distribution mechanisms.

One of the fundamental notions of our approach is the concept of Test Intention. Test Intentions have been devised in our laboratory and implemented within the SATEL language. Test intentions can be seen as templates for the automatic generation of test cases that cover certain behaviors of the System Under Test. The coverage is produced by the shape of the Test Intention and defined by the test engineer. Within our formal framework oracles are automatically extracted from the CO-OPN specification. Using the CO-OPN specification we are also able to automatically calculate equivalence classes for our test cases, thus reducing the test set initially generated by a Test Intention while keeping the same error discovering power.

We will provide a theoretical justification for our approach as well as exemplify the writing of test intentions in SATEL. We will also devote some time to the explanation of the semantics of SATEL, which have been formally defined and are based on Algebraic Specifications and Annotated Transition Systems. In particular we will show how equivalence class testing is achieved by performing a logical treatment of Annotated Transition Systems.