Time Based Requirements and Partitioning of Systems with Automatic Test Case Generation

Abstract

Automatic test case generation is a process that starts with text based functional requirements which are converted to a formal system requirements model. Once the formal system requirements model is created the automatic test case generation software creates a set of test scenarios that will verify that the requirements are all met. The automatic test case generation software accomplishes the conversion in a four step process: create base scenarios, identify unverified requirements, enhance scenarios to cover all requirements and allow black box testing, and then combine the scenarios into a single scenario tree. The automatic test case generation system outputs a set of scenarios by walking the final scenario tree. This dissertation expands on automatic test case generation for embedded systems in two major ways. The first is to extend functional automatic test case generation to allow for time based requirements as first class objects. The second is to use the automatic test case generation system to enable system partitioning decisions. The addition of time based requirements to the automatic test case generation system allows more complex systems to be developed. By providing a partitioning recommendation based on the test cases generated from the system requirements, the scope and capabilities of a single designer can be expanded to more complex systems. The resulting upgrades to the theory of automatic test case generation could be applied to the existing tools or incorporated in modern UML/SysML based design tools.