Test scenario generation and prioritization from UML 2.x sequence diagram

Abstract

Now a days UML is widely used for preparing design documents. It helps to specify, construct, visualize and document artifacts of software systems. Here we are proposing an approach to test the software in the early stage (design phase) of software development life cycle, so that it can help the software testers in the later stages. Our approach aims at generating test scenarios and prioritizing the test scenarios from UML 2.x sequence diagram. The objective of test prioritization is to schedule the tests in a particular order so that the testing process can be performed in an optimized way keeping in mind factors like, cost and time. The most challenging problem in generating test scenarios from UML 2.x sequence diagram is the presence of fragments such as alt, loop, break, par, opt etc. We propose an intermediate control flow graph in a testable form named Sequence Control Flow Graph (SCFG) resulting from the control flow analysis of UML 2.x sequence diagrams. We also propose an algorithm, which is used for generating test scenarios from UML 2.x Sequence diagrams. The test scenarios generated by our approach are suitable for detection of scenario faults, use case dependency and system testing. Finally we propose an efficient approach to prioritize test scenarios.