AGEDIS  - Achievements and project status

In the first six months of activity, the project has:

    * Performed two evaluation experiments using existing test automation tools in order to generate realistic requirements for the AGEDIS tool  set.
    * Studied existing software modeling languages and produced a first draft of the AGEDIS modeling language specification.
    * Formulated a dissemination plan and set up a web site for promotion and discussion of the AGEDIS programme .

France Telecom, using IBM Israel's technology for automated test case generation, performed the first experiment. The subject of the experiment was an implementation of the PGM (Pragmatic General Multicast) Protocol. The tool used for modeling, test generation, and test execution was GOTCHA-TCBeans.

These three different tasks were successfully carried out in a completely automated chain of actions, which shows the maturity of the GOTCHA-TCBeans tool. Nevertheless, the modeling activity exposed some limitations to the expressive power of the GOTCHA modeling language, especially in the description of concurrency, the notion of process, and real-time requirements. This enabled us to enrich the requirements for the AGEDIS modeling language. A strong point of the GOTCHA-TCBeans tools was recognized to be the richness of the language for expressing testing directives, which will be part of the AGEDIS tool. The smooth integration between the test generation tool and the test execution tool is also important. The choice of Java as a target for the execution language proved to be versatile enough to enable linking the test cases with a C implementation.

Intrasoft International, using Verimag's and Irisa's technology for automated test case generation, performed the second experiment. The subject of the experiment was the ECN (EDI/CSI Node) component of the Transit Computerization Project, a system that is already tested and in production. The tools used for modeling and test generation were ObjectGeode, TestComposer, and TGV. Test execution was performed manually.

First, using ObjectGeode, we designed an SDL specification for the ECN component, comprising five concurrent processes. During this task several minor limitations of SDL as a modeling language were highlighted, like the lack of facilities to describe unreliable channels, or to use process identifiers in a simple way. These limitations can be easily corrected in the AGEDIS modeling language. From this specification we were able to run the TGV test generation engine using two tools: TestComposer, commercialised by Telelogic, and the chain IF/TGV, distributed by Irisa/Verimag. These two tools differ in particular from the test selection point of view, and they happened to be complementary on this point. Using these tools we automatically generated a set of relevant abstract test cases for the application, illustrating its main execution scenarios. Some of them were very similar to the ones previously designed by hand, whereas others were new.

Regarding test generation with TGV, several points could be improved within the AGEDIS context, like the introduction of powerful optimisation techniques to better handle highly concurrent applications (based for instance on partial order reductions), and the use of a more general formalism than TTCN (Tree and Tabular Combined Notation) to express abstract test cases, which is the standard formalism used in the telecommunication sector.

Oxford University carried out a survey of software modeling languages, and, incorporating feedback from the experiments, has lead the consortium in formalizing a modeling language and test specification language for use in the AGEDIS tools. The language specification document is in draft form, and will be released for public comment on the AGEDIS website within the next two months.

The language incorporates elements of SDL, UML, and the GOTCHA extensions of Murphi. The choice of language was also guided by practical considerations of the availability of graphical editors, simulators, and model translators.
 
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