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Efficient coverage of parallel and hierarchical stateflow models for test case generation
Author(s) -
Satpathy Manoranjan,
Yeolekar Anand,
Peranandam Prakash,
Ramesh S.
Publication year - 2012
Publication title -
software testing, verification and reliability
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.216
H-Index - 49
eISSN - 1099-1689
pISSN - 0960-0833
DOI - 10.1002/stvr.444
Subject(s) - stateflow , computer science , hierarchy , parallelism (grammar) , component (thermodynamics) , scalability , block (permutation group theory) , finite state machine , focus (optics) , constraint (computer aided design) , test case , task (project management) , parallel computing , algorithm , theoretical computer science , programming language , mathematics , machine learning , matlab , engineering , optics , physics , geometry , regression analysis , systems engineering , database , economics , market economy , thermodynamics
SUMMARY This paper is concerned with test case generation from Simulink/Stateflow (SL/SF) models with a focus on coverage of SF model elements. Coverage of the SF component in a model is a difficult task because of two primary reasons: (i) the SF component itself may lie deep in the SL/SF model in which case, inputs have to pass through a complex chain of SL blocks to reach the SF block and (ii) nonlinear constraints in the model are difficult to solve using constraint solvers. Hierarchy and parallelism in the SF model add further complexity to the problem. The existing approaches flatten such SF elements, and generate test cases from the flattened finite state machines. Handling of issues (i) and (ii) has already been discussed in earlier research. In this paper, we present a method of covering SF components, which does not require to flatten any hierarchy or parallelism in the components. This not only makes the test case generation problem efficient but also addresses the problem of scalability. We have implemented this method and performed a number of medium‐sized case studies. The results show improved performance over the results obtained by some commercial tools. Copyright © 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.