Refinement in statechart testingA version of this paper was originally presented at SoftTest II: The Second U.K. Workshop on Software Testing Research, held at the University of York, U.K., 4–5 September 2003. It is reproduced here in modified form with the permission of the Workshop organizers

Saved in:

Bibliographic Details
Title:	Refinement in statechart testingA version of this paper was originally presented at SoftTest II: The Second U.K. Workshop on Software Testing Research, held at the University of York, U.K., 4–5 September 2003. It is reproduced here in modified form with the permission of the Workshop organizers
Authors:	Bogdanov, K.¹ k.bogdanov@dcs.shef.ac.uk, Holcombe, M.¹
Source:	Software Testing: Verification & Reliability. Sep2004, Vol. 14 Issue 3, p189-211. 23p.
Subjects:	Statecharts (Computer science), Software engineering, Computer software development, Structured techniques of electronic data processing, Computer systems, Computer software industry
Abstract:	An existing statechart testing method developed by the authors allows a tester to show the equivalence of the behaviour of an implementation of some software system to its Harel statechart specification, by testing. This requires a rather large test set and satisfaction of certain requirements for both a specification and an implementation. Introduction of additional constraints permits reduction in a test set size, without weakening of the conclusions obtained by testing. This paper describes how a test set can be derived from a relatively big statechart and investigates the role of a few specific constraints in the reduction of test set size, depending on where in the system structure these constraints are used. The main contribution of the paper is a demonstration that enforcing relatively weak constraints in the right place of a system's structure makes it possible to reduce the size of a test set by many orders of magnitude. The practical use of the contribution is to help developers structure a system under construction in such a way that it is completely testable using the described testing method with few additional constraints. Copyright © 2004 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]
	Copyright of Software Testing: Verification & Reliability is the property of Wiley-Blackwell and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites without the copyright holder's express written permission. Additionally, content may not be used with any artificial intelligence tools or machine learning technologies. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)
Database:	Engineering Source

Description
Abstract:	An existing statechart testing method developed by the authors allows a tester to show the equivalence of the behaviour of an implementation of some software system to its Harel statechart specification, by testing. This requires a rather large test set and satisfaction of certain requirements for both a specification and an implementation. Introduction of additional constraints permits reduction in a test set size, without weakening of the conclusions obtained by testing. This paper describes how a test set can be derived from a relatively big statechart and investigates the role of a few specific constraints in the reduction of test set size, depending on where in the system structure these constraints are used. The main contribution of the paper is a demonstration that enforcing relatively weak constraints in the right place of a system's structure makes it possible to reduce the size of a test set by many orders of magnitude. The practical use of the contribution is to help developers structure a system under construction in such a way that it is completely testable using the described testing method with few additional constraints. Copyright © 2004 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]
ISSN:	09600833
DOI:	10.1002/stvr.301