School of Computing

From Test Cases to FSMs: Augmented Test-driven Development and Property Inference

Thomas Arts and Simon Thompson

In Scott Lystig Fritchie and Konstantinos Sagonas, editors, Erlang�10: Proceedings of the 2010 ACM SIGPLAN Erlang Workshop, pages 182-196. ACM SIGPLAN, September 2010.

Abstract

This paper uses the inference of finite state machines from EUnit test suites for Erlang programs to make two contributions. First, we show that the inferred FSMs provide feedback on the adequacy of the test suite that is developed incrementally during the test-driven development of a system. This is novel because the feedback we give is independent of the implementation of the system.

Secondly, we use FSM inference to develop QuickCheck properties for testing state-based systems. This has the effect of transforming a fixed set of tests into a property which can be tested using randomly generated data, substantially widening the coverage and scope of the tests.

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Bibtex Record

@inproceedings{3041,
author = {Thomas Arts and Simon Thompson},
title = {{From Test Cases to FSMs: Augmented Test-driven Development and Property Inference}},
month = {September},
year = {2010},
pages = {182-196},
keywords = {determinacy analysis, Craig interpolants},
note = {},
doi = {},
url = {http://www.cs.kent.ac.uk/pubs/2010/3041},
    publication_type = {inproceedings},
    submission_id = {27282_1284467660},
    ISBN = {978-1-4503-0253-1},
    booktitle = {Erlang�10: Proceedings of the 2010 ACM SIGPLAN Erlang Workshop},
    editor = {Scott Lystig Fritchie and Konstantinos Sagonas},
    publisher = {ACM SIGPLAN},
    refereed = {yes},
}

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