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Masters Attendance
Model-BasedTestingWithSpecExplorer

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Date: 2008-04-24

Time: 11:00

Room: BBL room 471

----+++ Speaker: Laurence Cabenda

----+++ Title: Model-Based Testing with Spec Explorer

----+++ Abstract

Testing is often still one of the more expensive parts of the software
developing process. During the last decades major efforts have been put on
trying to automate this process to reduce the cost and trying to assure
quality of software systems. The most often used solution is in the form
of executable test-scripts, which test the system on specific properties
and can be re-executed, forming a sort of &#8220;regression set&#8221;. This type of
test automation is a poor solution, since it does not take into account
the fact that an implementation under test (IUT) often changes. This
requires the regression set to be re-created, since it is not adaptable. A
second deficiency of this solution is that the same tests are being used,
which might have found some faults in the IUT at first, but are unlikely
to find new ones.

This talk will discuss Model-Based Testing (MBT) as a solution to these
problems, which uses a formal specification to describe an abstract model
of the IUT. From this model it is possible to automate the generation of
test-cases. Test-cases are in fact traversals of this model program. This
enables the tester to reach a high coverage of the functional requirements
of the systems, since the tester is able to explore the model and create
test-cases based on different strategies.

Spec Explorer is a software development tool for advanced model-based
specification and conformance testing, which focuses on object-oriented
reactive systems; it is developed and maintained by the Microsoft Research
Group.  During this talk I will discuss how Spec Explorer tool implements
the MBT methodology.