An automatic generation strategy for test cases based on constraints

Abstract

We propose an automatic generation strategy for test cases. We use the Unified Modeling Language (UML) use cases to describe system requirements, as it can serve as a good basis of the test case generation. Meanwhile, in order to ensure that the test cases can automatically be generated, sequence diagram is used to describe the scene because of its superiority on message transferring between systems. A formal description of the sequence diagram is given, in order to achieve the automated generation of test cases. However, due to the characteristics of the use case description, the internal demands of the system are ignored, leading to inaccurate and rough test cases directly generated by use cases. In order to effectively control such adverse effects, we adopt contraction method that formal constraints demands described by the use cases and keep the constraints through the sequence diagram. This contraction method can not only enhance the test scene accuracy, but also ensure the final generated test cases more accurate with more detailed coverage. © 2013 Springer-Verlag.