Automatic test generation: a use case driven approach

TLDR

Use cases are considered a strong foundation for system testing, yet a significant gap remains in translating high‑level use cases into concrete test cases. The authors propose an automated approach to generate system test scenarios for object‑oriented embedded software that addresses traceability issues and aims to achieve statement coverage, validated through empirical evaluation and case studies. By formalizing requirements with use cases extended by contracts, the method constructs a transition system from which test cases are synthesized, and has been experimentally deployed at Thales Airborne Systems.

Abstract

Use cases are believed to be a good basis for system testing. Yet, to automate the test generation process, there is a large gap to bridge between high-level use cases and concrete test cases. We propose a new approach for automating the generation of system test scenarios in the context of object-oriented embedded software, taking into account traceability problems between high-level views and concrete test case execution. Starting from a formalization of the requirements based on use cases extended with contracts, we automatically build a transition system from which we synthesize test cases. Our objective is to cover the system in terms of statement coverage with those generated tests: an empirical evaluation of our approach is given based on this objective and several case studies. We briefly discuss the experimental deployment of our approach in the field at Thales Airborne Systems.