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Coverage-Based Testing with Symbolic Transition Systems

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Tests and Proofs (TAP 2019)

Part of the book series: Lecture Notes in Computer Science ((LNPSE,volume 11823))

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Abstract

We provide a model-based testing approach for systems comprising both state-transition based control flow, and data elements such as variables and data-dependent transitions. We propose test generation and execution, based on model-coverage: we generate test cases that aim to reach all transitions of the model. To obtain a test case reaching a certain transition, we need to combine reachability in the control flow, and satisfiability of the data elements of the model. Concrete values for data parameters are generated on-the-fly, i.e., during test execution, such that received outputs from the system can be taken into account for the inputs later provided in test execution. Due to undecidability of the satisfiability problem, SMT solvers may return result ‘unknown’. Our algorithm deals with this explicitly. We implemented our method in Maude combined with Z3, and use this to demonstrate the applicability of our method on the Bounded Retransmission Protocol benchmark. We measure performance by counting the number of inputs and outputs needed to discover bugs in mutants, i.e., in non-conforming variants of the specification. As a result, we find that we perform 3 times better, according to the geometric mean, than when using random testing as implemented by the tool TorXakis.

P. van den Bos and J. Tretmans—Funded by the Netherlands Organisation of Scientific Research (NWO): 13859.

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Acknowledgments

This work was largely performed while the first author was visiting INRIA/the University of Lille. We would like to thank Vlad Rusu for making this visit possible, and for his feedback and support with using Maude.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Institute for Computing and Information Sciences, Radboud University, Nijmegen, The Netherlands

    Petra van den Bos & Jan Tretmans

  2. ESI (TNO), Eindhoven, The Netherlands

    Jan Tretmans

Authors
  1. Petra van den Bos
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  2. Jan Tretmans
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Correspondence to Petra van den Bos .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München, Munich, Germany

    Dirk Beyer

  2. University of Paris-Sud, Orsay, France

    Chantal Keller

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van den Bos, P., Tretmans, J. (2019). Coverage-Based Testing with Symbolic Transition Systems. In: Beyer, D., Keller, C. (eds) Tests and Proofs. TAP 2019. Lecture Notes in Computer Science(), vol 11823. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-31157-5_5

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-31157-5_5

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  • Publisher Name: Springer, Cham

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-030-31156-8

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-030-31157-5

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