A Model-driven approach for reusing tests in smart home systems

Abstract

The continuous advances of ubiquitous and pervasive computing have contributed to the successful increase in smart home systems. However, usually these systems are developed at a lower abstraction level very tied to specific technologies. Model-driven approaches have emerged to tackle the design of these systems, improving their reusability and maintainability and decreasing their complexity. Nevertheless, the existing model-driven approaches to develop smart home systems do not cover the whole development process, and testing activities are still relegated to the final programming stages, reducing their reusability for different technologies or platforms. Some approaches have proposed the incorporation of testing activities into the model-driven process. However, the test models defined are very tied to the specific systems and they must be redesigned for every new system to test, reducing thus the reusability of the test behavior. In this setting, this paper presents a process to define reusable tests that may be automatically applied to different smart home systems. The process is integrated into a whole MDD approach that provides support for the modeling of smart home systems at two different abstraction levels, ensuring the reusability of tests also for different smart home platforms. © Springer-Verlag London Limited 2011.