Using LTL rewriting to improve the performance of model-checker based test-case generation

  • Authors:

  • Gordon Fraser;Franz Wotawa

  • Affiliations:

  • Graz University of Technology, Inffeldgasse, Graz, Austria;Graz University of Technology, Inffeldgasse, Graz, Austria

  • Venue:
  • Proceedings of the 3rd international workshop on Advances in model-based testing
  • Year:
  • 2007

Quantified Score

Hi-index 0.00

Visualization

Abstract

Model-checkers have recently been suggested for automated software test-case generation. Several works have presented methods that create efficient test-suites using model-checkers. Ease of use and complete automation are major advantages of such approaches. However, the use of a model-checker comes at the price of potential performance problems. If the model used for test-case generation is complex, then model-checker based approaches can be very slow, or even not applicable at all. In this paper, we identify that unnecessary, redundant calls to the model-checker are one of the causes of bad performance. To overcome this problem, we suggest the use of temporal logic rewriting techniques, which originate from runtime verification research. This achieves a significant increase in the performance, and improves the applicability of model-checker based test-case generation approaches in general. At the same time, the suggested techniques achieve a reduction of the resulting test-suite sizes without degradation of the fault sensitivity. This helps to reduce the costs of the test-case execution.