Generating Test Data From Requirements/Specifications: Final Report.

This report presents results for the Rockwell Collins Inc. sponsored project on generating test data from requirements/specifications, which started May 19, 1997. The purpose of this project is to improve our ability to test software that needs to be highly reliable by developing formal techniques for generating test cases from formal specification al descriptions of the software. Formal specifications represent a significant opportunity for testing because they precisely describe what functions the software is supposed to provide in a form that can be easily manipulated by automated means. This report presents a general model for developing test inputs from state-based specifications, a derivation process for obtaining the test cases, a fully worked out example for a small system, and test cases from a specifications of an industrial system. The test data generation model includes techniques for generating tests at several levels of abstraction for specifications, including the complete transition sequence level, the transition-pair level, and the detailed transition level. These techniques provide coverage criteria that are based on the specifications, and are made up of several parts, including test prefixes that contain inputs necessary to put the software into the appropriate state for the test values. The test generation process includes several steps for transforming specifications to tests.