Analyzing Response Inconsistencies in Test Suites

Extensive testing of modern communicating systems often involve large and complex test suites that need to be maintained throughout the life cycle of the tested system. For this purpose, quality assurance of test suites is an inevitable task that eventually has an impact on the quality of the system under test as well. In this work, we present a means to analyze response inconsistencies in test suites. We define a response consistency relation and describe a method that identifies candidates for the analysis. Using these candidates, we find response inconsistent states. The applicability of this method is discussed for local test cases, local test cases with different response orders, and distributed test cases with concurrent behavior.