GENERATION OF TEST CASES FOR FUNCTIONAL TESTING OF APPLICATIONS

• US 20090018811A1
• Filed: 07/09/2007
• Published: 01/15/2009
• Est. Priority Date: 07/09/2007
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: International Business Machines Corporation
• Original Assignee: International Business Machines Corporation
• Inventors: Sinha, Avik, Paradkar, Amitkumar Manoharrao
• Granted Patent: US 8,683,446 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 703/22
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 11/3684 for test design, e.g. generating new test cases

Abstract

An automated system and method to generate functional conformance tests for applications are provided. The system and method in one aspect use Inputs, Outputs, Preconditions, Effects (IOPEs) paradigm associated with an application for automatically generating test goals. A planner component may accept these testing goals to generate a sequence of operations or invocations as a test case. Verification sequences are also generated. The system and method also allow generation of executable test cases, which can be applied to the various interfaces through which the application may be accessed.

Claims

1. A computer implemented method for generating a testing procedure for an implementation of a function, comprising:

obtaining a model of an application including at least a description of input, output, and one or more state transitions of a function in the application;

deriving one or more input conditions and one or more state conditions as one or more testing objective;

deriving from the model a sequence of one or more actions to set up said one or more state conditions;

deriving from the model one or more expected outputs associated with an implementation of the function under said one or more state conditions; and

deriving from the model an expected end state, and a second sequence of one or more actions and one or more expected outputs of the second sequence of one or more actions to verify the end state.

2. The method of claim 1, wherein the steps are performed automatically.

3. The method of claim 1, wherein the sequence of one or more actions includes one or more function calls in the application.

4. The method of claim 1, wherein the step of obtaining a model includes obtaining information describing one or more objects and associated attributes of the application.

5. The method of claim 1, wherein the step of obtaining a model includes obtaining information describing interaction of a system on which the application may be executed with an environment via a set of operations.

6. The method of claim 5, wherein said information further includes describing the inputs from the environment to the system, describing an outputs from the system to the environment, describing one or more pre-conditions of the operations in terms of the internal state of the system, and describing one or more effects of an operation on the internal state of the system.

7. The method of claim 1, wherein the model includes a use case description of the application.

8. The method of claim 1, wherein the model includes web service description of the application.

9. The method of claim 8, wherein the web service description is specified in WSDL-S, OWL-S, or combinations thereof.

10. The method of claim 1, wherein the model includes a functional description of the application.

11. The method of claim 1, wherein the second sequence of one or more actions includes automatically created one or more operations that distinguish the state of the system from other states.

12. The method of claim 1, wherein the test objectives validate the application for one or more functional properties as described in the model of the application.

13. A computer implemented method for generating a testing procedure for an implementation of a function, comprising:

obtaining a model of an application, the model including at least one or more objects, one or more inputs and outputs associated with said one or more objects, one or more preconditions, and one or more effects associated with the application;

generating a testing goal from the model, the testing goal including at least a state condition and a testing function;

generating a sequence of one or more actions based on the testing goal;

generating one or more expected output and a system end state associated with applying the sequence of one or more actions; and

generating a sequence of one or more verification actions based on said one or more expected output and the system end state.

14. The method of claim 13, further including:

generating a test script implementing the sequence of one or more actions and the sequence of one or more verification actions using a template associated with a selected interface.

15. The method of claim 13, wherein the model further includes one or more fault models.

16. The method of claim 13, wherein the steps are performed automatically.

17. A system for generating a testing procedure for an implementation of a function, comprising:

an application model including at least one or more objects, one or more inputs and outputs associated with said one or more objects, one or more preconditions of a system employing the application, and one or more effects on the system applying said one or more objects;

a goal generator module operable to execute on a processor, the goal generator module further operable to automatically generate one or more testing goals using the application model;

a planner module operable to execute on a processor to generate a sequence of one or more actions based on said one or more testing goals; and

a verification sequence generator module operable to execute on a processor to generate a sequence of one or more verification actions based on one or more expected outputs from the sequence of one or more actions and an expected system end state resulting from the sequence of one or more actions.

18. The system of claim 17, further including:

a test script generator module operator to generate a test script for a selected interface using a template, the sequence of one or more actions and the sequence of one or more verification actions.

19. A program storage device readable by a machine, tangibly embodying a program of instructions executable by the machine to perform a method of generating a testing procedure for an implementation of a function, comprising:

obtaining a model of an application, the model including at least one or more objects, one or more inputs and outputs associated with said one or more objects, one or more preconditions of a system employing the application, and one or more effects on the system applying said one or more objects;

generating a testing goal from the model, the testing goal including at least a state condition and a testing function;

generating a sequence of one or more actions based on the testing goal;

generating one or more expected output and a system end state associated with applying the sequence of one or more actions; and

generating a sequence of one or more verification actions based on said one or more expected output and the system end state.

20. The program storage device of claim 19, further including:

generating a test script implementing the sequence of one or more actions and the sequence of one or more verification actions using a template associated with a selected interface.