Open Systems Laboratory at Illinois

Combining test case generation and runtime verification

By Cyrille Artho, Howard Barringer, Allen Goldberg, Klaus Havelund, Sarfraz Khurshid, Michael R. Lowry, Corina S. Pasareanu, Grigore Rosu, Koushik Sen, Willem Visser, and Richard Washington. Theor. Comput. Sci, 336(2-3):209–234, 2005.

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http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.tcs.2004.11.007

Abstract

Software testing is typically an ad hoc process where human testers manually write test inputs and descriptions of expected test results, perhaps automating their execution in a regression suite. This process is cumbersome and costly. This paper reports results on a framework to further automate this process. The framework consists of combining automated test case generation based on systematically exploring the input domain of the program with runtime verification, where execution traces are monitored and verified against properties expressed in temporal logic. Capabilities also exist for analyzing traces for concurrency errors, such as deadlocks and data races. The input domain of the program is explored using a model checker extended with symbolic execution. Properties are formulated in an expressive temporal logic. A methodology is advocated that automatically generates properties specific to each input rather than formulating properties uniformly true for all inputs. The paper describes an application of the technology to a NASA rover controller.

BibTeX

@article{journals/tcs/ArthoBGHKLPRSVW05,
    author = "Artho, Cyrille and Barringer, Howard and Goldberg,
              Allen and Havelund, Klaus and Khurshid, Sarfraz and Lowry,
              Michael R. and Pasareanu, Corina S. and Rosu, Grigore and Sen,
              Koushik and Visser, Willem and Washington, Richard",
    title = "Combining test case generation and runtime verification",
    ee = "http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.tcs.2004.11.007",
    journal = "Theor. Comput. Sci",
    keywords = "formal methods, software engineering",
    number = "2-3",
    pages = "209-234",
    volume = "336",
    year = "2005",
}