The final models of specification

• Main Authors: Igor Bourdonov, Alexander Kosachev
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: Ivannikov Institute for System Programming of the Russian Academy of Sciences 2018-10-01
• Series: Труды Института системного программирования РАН
• Subjects: семантика взаимодействия; отказы; разрушение; дивергенция; конформность; безопасное тестирование; трассы; lts; генерация тестов
• Online Access: https://ispranproceedings.elpub.ru/jour/article/view/1013

The paper describes the research in formal methods of conformance testing of the target system against requirements given in specifications. Such testing is based on interaction semantics defining test stimuli and observations of actions and refusals (absence of actions). Unobservable actions and refusals are also possible. Destruction is introduced as a forbidden action that should be avoided during interaction. A notion of safe testing is also introduced, when no unobservable refusals and destruction occur and no test stimuli applied in divergence. On this basis, the implementation hypothesis of safety and safe conformance are defined, as well as the generation of complete test suite from specification.The most common model of specification is LTS (Labelled Transition System). However, for the described interaction semantics, only traces (sequences of observations) are important, not the LTS states. Therefore, the most natural is the trace model defined as a set of LTS traces.The goal of this paper is to define the subset of specification traces sufficient for generation of the complete test suite. We called such subset the final trace model of specification. On the other hand, LTS model is convenient as a way of finite representation of regular trace sets. To represent the final trace model, the paper proposes a variation of LTS called final RTS (Refusal Transition System). The transitions on observable refusals are defined explicitly. Such model is very convenient for test generation: 1) it is deterministic, 2) trace of observations is safe iff it ends in non-terminal state with no destruction, 3) test stimulus is safe after the trace iff it is safe in the final state of the trace.The paper proposes algorithms for transformation of LTS model into final RTS model. Sufficient conditions for creation of the final RTS in finite time are also defined.