Constraints-based testing for systems specified with statecharts

Abstract

Statecharts is a visual specification language which is a finite state machine(FSM) extended with features such as parallelism, hierarchy and broadcast communication. It is difficult and complex to test the systems specified with Statecharts because of their states and extended features. In this thesis, we propose a testing method for a system with a Statecharts specification. Our approach is based on the constraints-based testing(CBT) techniques that use for sequencing constraints. The sequencing constraints are required properties of a system about event sequences and useful for representing diverse control flows of a system. Our approach consists of three steps. First, we define the sequencing constraints by the relations between external events: a precedence constraint and a multiple precedence constraint. Second, we extract sequencing constraints from a Statecharts specification. We first extract macro steps from a specification and then extract sequencing constraints from macro steps. Finally, we construct a constraints graph with sequencing constraints and define a constraints coverage criterion, and generate test cases that satisfy it from a constraints graph. Comparison of approach with other testing methods for a system with a Statecharts specification shows that our approach has a lower complexity and demonstrates a sufficient testing power.