Model-Based Testing for Systems of Systems
For Model-Based testing to be successful, it is necessary to model the system to be tested with an executable model-the most common ones are decision tables, finite state machines, statecharts, and some extension of classical Petri nets. Since these executable models are frequently paired with engines that allow a user to “execute” the model, this serves as an elegant form of rapid prototyping. Further, interesting scenarios can be easily captured and almost automatically expressed as system level test cases.
After a brief discussion that eliminates three of the executable models, this chapter presents Event-Driven Petri Nets and blends them with the Swim Lane pattern of UML, resulting in a model ideally suited for the communication interactions that are the essence of Systems of Systems testing. The material is taken almost exclusively from chapter 17 of Software Testing-A Craftsman’s Approach, fourth edition.
This eBook identifies a set of communication primitives that are necessary to express the communication among constituents in a system of systems. Each primitive is expressed as a traditional Petri net. The chapter concludes with a small, event driven system of systems modelled in Swim Lane Event-Driven Petri Nets.
Key Takeaways:
1. Characteristics of Systems of Systems that require a new executable model.
2. A set of communication primitives designed for the needs of constituent systems.
Paul C. Jorgensen
Paul jokes that he has an identity crisis: his twenty-year career in industry developing, supporting, and testing telephone switching systems is now exceeded by twenty-five years of university level teaching and research. First educated as a mathematician (B.A. and M.A) in the 1960s, he completed his Ph.D. in Computer Science in 1985, and promptly joined academia. He maintains active contacts with practitioners with his consultancy, Software Paradigms, and he prefers to make presentations at practitioner-oriented conferences. In his words, these contacts “keep him honest”.
Living and working in Italy for three years made him a confirmed Italophile-he travels there frequently with his wife, Carol, and their daughters Kirsten and Katia. He swims as often as he can, sails his small sailboat in the Michigan summers, and compensates for Michigan winters by going to Antigua with his family in the summer. His email address is [email protected]
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