This paper describes a technique that helps a test engineer select, from a large set of randomly generated test inputs, a small subset likely to reveal faults in the software under test. The technique takes a program or software component, plus a set of normal executions — say, from an existing test suite, or from observations of the software running properly. The technique works by extracting ...

The average probability of error is used to demonstrate performance of a Bayesian classification test (referred to as the Combined Bayes Test (CBT)) given the training data of each class are mislabeled. The CBT combines the information in discrete training and test data to infer symbol probabilities, where a uniform Dirichlet prior (i.e., a noninformative prior of complete ignorance) is assumed...

Ensuring high object interoperability is a goal of integration testing for objectoriented software. When messages are sent, objects that receive them should respond as intended. Ensuring this is especially difficult when software uses components that are developed by different vendors, in different languages, and the implementation sources are not all available. A finite state machines model of...

Model-based testing (MBT) relies on models of a system under test and/or its environment to derive test cases for the system. This paper discusses the process of MBT and defines a taxonomy that covers the key aspects of MBT approaches. It is intended to help with understanding the characteristics, similarities and differences of those approaches, and with classifying the approach used in a part...

Often a rule-based system is tested by checking its performance on a number of test cases with known solutions, modifying the system until it gives the correct results for all or a suuciently high proportion of the test cases. This method cannot guarantee that the rule-base has been adequately or completely covered during the testing process. We introduce an approach to testing of rule-based sy...

Test templates and a test template framework are introduced as useful concepts in specification-based testing The framework can be defined using any model-based specification notation and used to derive tests from model-based specificationsin this paper, it is demonstrated using the Z notation. The framework formally defines test data sets and their relation to the operations in a specification...

In this paper we describe the functional features and the architecture of a tool implementing the Stocks-Carrington framework (TTF) for model based testing (MBT). The resulting prototype, called Fastest, makes it easy to generate test cases from Z specifications. We not only apply the ideas of the referred framework but we also use a technique based on finite models to find test cases, which ha...

Often a rule-based system is tested by checking its performance on a number of test cases with known solutions, modifying the system until it gives the correct results for all or a sufficiently high proportion of the test cases. This method cannot guarantee that the rule-base has been adequately or completely covered during the testing process. We introduce an approach to testing of rule-based ...

Where a software component is updated or replaced regression testing is required. Regression test sets can contain considerable redundancy. This is especially true in the case where no formal regression test set exists and the new component must instead be compared against patterns of behaviour derived from in-use log data from the previous version. Previous work has applied search-based techni...

Context: Test suite reduction is the problem of creating and executing a set of test cases that are smaller in size but equivalent in effectiveness to an original test suite. However, reduced suites can still be large and executing all the tests in a reduced test suite can be time consuming. Objective: We propose ordering the tests in a reduced suite to increase its rate of fault detection. The...