Generation and Minimization of Test Cases Based on Stream X-Machine(SXM)

Abstract

Testing is an important phase of Software Development Life Cycle (SDLC). In SDLC, to develop any software product more than half of the development effort has been spent on testing a software product. Software testing can be performed either automatically or manually. Manual software testing takes more time and effort to write and execute test cases. The resulted test cases also may not achieved several test coverage criteria, so automated software testing is highly needed because it can increase the reliability of the testing process.

In this work, first a state-based modeling formalism called SXM (Stream X-Machine) is used to model both data flow and control flow of the System Under Test (SUT). SXM is used for automatic generation of test cases that is based on model-based testing approach. SXMs are an extended version of finite state machine because of the two additional properties: 1. SXM has memory as an internal storage 2. it uses processing function name that the machine can perform to label the transition of the model rather than simple symbol. Principal quality of the SXM is its model-based testing methodology, which uncovers all irregularities between the model and SUT under all defined condition. After generating test cases a technique is introduced for test suite minimization which discards the redundant test cases.