ADLscope: an automated specification-based unit testing tool

Abstract

Specification-based testing is important because it relates directly to what the program is supposed to do and can detect certain errors that are often not detected by traditional code-based testing techniques such as branch coverage and statement coverage. We have developed an automated testing tool, called ADLscope, that utilizes the formal specification of a program unit as the basis for test coverage measurement. A tester uses ADLscope to test application programming interfaces (APIs) written in the C programming language. The API must be formally specified in the Assertion Definition Language (ADL). The tester uses ADLscope to generate coverage conditions from a program's ADL specifications. When the API is tested, ADLscope automatically measures how many of the coverage conditions have been covered by the tests.