Lecture Notes in Computer Science 3472

440 Wolfgang Prenninger, Mohammad El-Ramly, and Marc Horstmann
in the test model, otherwise the derived test cases may be significantly flawed.
Together with an equally formal test specification, where the selection criteria
of how to choose test cases is covered, the automatic generation of test cases
can be performed. After that, a concretization of test cases has to be done. This
is because the derived test cases are on the same abstraction level as the test
model but have to be executed on concrete System Under Test (SUT) level. At
last, the test evaluation is done either on SUT level or on abstract test case level.
System Development/Concretisation
Abstraction
level 1
Abstraction
level 2
Abstraction
level ...
System Requirements/Specification
Development Models
Special Test Models
Test Model
System under Test
Test
Specification
Test Case
Generation and
Concretisation
Test Case Execution
Fig. 15.1. The Abstract Process of Model-Based Testing
Test Evaluation
Test Result
SUT response
abstraction
Fig. 15.1 shows the different activities and results of model based testing in
the context of the SUT development process. The arrow at the left side symbolizes
the progress in development and concretization of the SUT, where different
abstraction layers can exist between the system requirements specification and
the SUT. The test model can either be based on the requirement specification
by building a special test model or it can be derived out of a certain abstraction
level in case that a suitable model exists. A second interface between system development
and model based testing is the test purpose that should be defined in
the requirement specification and has to be formalized into a test specification.
After generation and concretization of test cases the third interface is given by
applying the test cases to the SUT and executing them. In the following paragraphs
the activities and results of model based testing will be described in an
abstract manner before the other sections will explain them in more detail.