Selecting and mapping test sequences from formal specifications of concurrent programs

Abstract

Specification-based testing of concurrent programs requires that test sequences be selected from the specification and mapped to the implementation. Test sequences can be selected incrementally. During incremental testing, the specification is partitioned into two or more components that are each tested separately. In this paper, we show how guidance for the partitioning can be provided by a constraint-style Lotos specification. Using incremental analysis techniques, components can be composed and reduced into smaller but observationally equivalent components. The combination of incremental testing and analysis alleviates the state explosion problem during test generation. We also show a mapping between the abstract test sequences of a Lotos specification and the concrete test sequences of an Ada implementation. The results of an empirical study of specification-based incremental testing are reported.