End-to-End (E2E) Testing and Evaluation of High-Assurance Systems

Abstract

U. S. Department of Defense (DoD) end-to-end (E2E) testing and evaluation (T& E) technology for high-assurance systems has evolved from specification and analysis of thin threads, through system scenarios, to scenario-driven system engineering including reliability, security, and safety assurance, as well as dynamic verification and validation. Currently, E2E T& E technology is entering its fourth generation and being applied to the development and verification of systems in service-oriented architectures (SOA) and web services (WS). The technology includes a series of techniques, including automated generation of thin threads from system scenarios; automated dependency analysis; completeness and consistency analysis based on condition–event pairs in the system specification; automated test-case generation based on verification patterns; test-case generation based on the topological structure of Boolean expressions; automated code generation for system execution as well as for simulation, automated reliability assurance based on the system design structure, dynamic policy specification, analysis, enforcement and simulation; automated state-model generation; automated sequence-diagram generation; model checking on system specifications; and model checking based on test-case generation. E2E T& E technology has been successfully applied to several DoD command-and-control applications as well civilian projects.