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Basic Behavioral Models For Software Product Lines: Revisited
Halmstad University, School of Information Technology, Halmstad Embedded and Intelligent Systems Research (EIS), Centre for Research on Embedded Systems (CERES).ORCID iD: 0000-0002-4776-883X
Halmstad University, School of Information Technology, Halmstad Embedded and Intelligent Systems Research (EIS), Centre for Research on Embedded Systems (CERES).
Halmstad University, School of Information Technology, Halmstad Embedded and Intelligent Systems Research (EIS), Centre for Research on Embedded Systems (CERES).ORCID iD: 0000-0002-4869-6794
2018 (English)In: Science of Computer Programming, ISSN 0167-6423, E-ISSN 1872-7964, Vol. 168, p. 171-185Article in journal (Refereed) Published
Abstract [en]

In Beohar et al. (2016) [9], we established an expressiveness hierarchy and studied the notions of refinement and testing for three fundamental behavioral models for software product lines. These models were featured transition systems, product line labeled transition systems, and modal transition systems. It turns out that our definition of product line labeled transition systems is more restrictive than the one introduced by Gruler, Leucker, and Scheidemann. Adopting the original and more liberal notion changes the expressiveness results, as we demonstrate in this paper. Namely, we show that the original notion of product line labeled transition systems and featured transition systems are equally expressive. As an additional result, we show that there are featured transition systems for which the size of the corresponding product line labeled transition system, resulting from any sound encoding, is exponentially larger than the size of the original model. Furthermore, we show that each product line labeled transition system can be encoded into a featured transition system, such that the size of featured transition system is linear in terms of the size of the corresponding model. To summarize, featured transition systems are equally expressive as, but exponentially more succinct than, product line labeled transition systems. © 2018 Elsevier B.V.

Place, publisher, year, edition, pages
Amsterdam: Elsevier, 2018. Vol. 168, p. 171-185
Keywords [en]
Software product lines, Behavioral model, Featured transition systems, Calculus of communicating systems, Product line labeled transition systems
National Category
Embedded Systems
Identifiers
URN: urn:nbn:se:hh:diva-33892DOI: 10.1016/j.scico.2018.09.001ISI: 000450385200010Scopus ID: 2-s2.0-85054040481OAI: oai:DiVA.org:hh-33892DiVA, id: diva2:1098731
Projects
AUTO-CAAS HoG
Funder
Knowledge Foundation, 20140312Swedish Research Council, 621-2014-5057ELLIIT - The Linköping‐Lund Initiative on IT and Mobile CommunicationsAvailable from: 2017-05-26 Created: 2017-05-26 Last updated: 2021-05-06Bibliographically approved
In thesis
1. Test Models and Algorithms for Model-Based Testing of Software Product Lines
Open this publication in new window or tab >>Test Models and Algorithms for Model-Based Testing of Software Product Lines
2017 (English)Licentiate thesis, comprehensive summary (Other academic)
Abstract [en]

Software product line (SPL) engineering has become common practice for mass production and customization of software. A software product line comprises a family of software systems which share a managed core set of artifacts. There are also a set of well-defined variabilities between the products of a product line. The main idea in SPL engineering is to enable systematic reuse in different phases of software development to reduce cost and time to release.

Model-Based Testing (MBT) is a technique that is widely used for checking the quality of software systems. In MBT, test cases are generated from an abstract model, which captures the desired behavior of the system. Then, the test cases are executed against a real implementation of the system and the compliance of the implementation to the specification is checked by comparing the observed outputs with the ones prescribed by the model.

Software product lines have been applied in many domains in which sys- tems are mission critical and MBT is one of the techniques that is widely used for quality assurance of such systems. As the number of products can be potentially large in an SPL, using conventional approaches for MBT of the products of an SPL individually and as single systems can be very costly and time consuming. Hence, several approaches have been proposed in order to enable systematic reuse in different phases of the MBT process.

An efficient modeling technique is the first step towards an efficient MBT technique for SPLs. There have been several formalisms proposed for modeling SPLs. In this thesis, we conduct a study on such modeling techniques, focusing on three fundamental formalisms, namely featured transition systems, modal transition systems, and product line calculus of communicating systems. We compare the expressive power and the succinctness of these formalisms.

Furthermore, we investigate adapting existing MBT methods for efficient testing of SPLs. As a part of this line of our research, we adapt the test case generation algorithm of one of the well-known black-box testing approaches, namely, Harmonized State Identification (HSI) method by exploiting the idea of delta-oriented programming. We apply the adapted test case generation algorithm to a case study taken from industry and the results show up to 50 percent reduction of time in test case generation by using the delta-oriented HSI method.

In line with our research on investigating existing MBT techniques, we compare the relative efficiency and effectiveness of the test case generation algorithms of the well-known Input-Output Conformance (ioco) testing approach and the complete ioco which is another testing technique used for input output transition systems that guarantees fault coverage. The comparison is done using three case studies taken from the automotive and railway domains. The obtained results show that complete ioco is more efficient in detecting deep faults (i.e., the faults reached through longer traces) in large state spaces while ioco is more efficient in detecting shallow faults (i.e., the faults reached through shorter traces) in small state spaces.

Place, publisher, year, edition, pages
Halmstad: Halmstad University Press, 2017. p. 91
Series
Halmstad University Dissertations ; 30
National Category
Embedded Systems
Identifiers
urn:nbn:se:hh:diva-33893 (URN)978-91-87045-62-2 (ISBN)978-91-87045-63-9 (ISBN)
Presentation
2017-05-29, Trade Center, Kristian IV:s väg 3, Halmstad, 10:00 (English)
Opponent
Supervisors
Available from: 2017-07-05 Created: 2017-05-26 Last updated: 2021-05-06Bibliographically approved
2. Modeling and Model-Based Testing of Software Product Lines
Open this publication in new window or tab >>Modeling and Model-Based Testing of Software Product Lines
2019 (English)Doctoral thesis, comprehensive summary (Other academic)
Abstract [en]

Software product line (SPL) engineering has become common practice for mass production and customization of variability intensive systems. A software product line comprises a family of software systems which share a managed core set of artifacts and also have a set of well-defined variabilities. The main idea in SPL engineering is to enable systematic reuse in different phases of software development to reduce cost and time to release.

Model-Based Testing (MBT) is a technique that is widely used for quality assurance of software systems. In MBT, an abstract model, which captures the desired behavior of the system, is used to generate test cases. The test cases are executed against a real implementation of the system and the conformance between the implementation and the specification is checked by comparing the observed outputs with the ones prescribed by the model.

Software product lines have been applied in a number of domains with mission critical systems. MBT is one of the techniques that has been used for analysis of such systems. As the number of products can be potentially large in an SPL, using conventional approaches for MBT of the products of an SPL individually can be very costly and time consuming. To tackle this problem, several approaches have been proposed in order to enable systematic reuse in different phases of the MBT process.

An efficient modeling technique is the first step towards an efficient MBT technique for SPLs. So far, several formalisms have been proposed for modeling SPLs. In this thesis, we conduct a study on such modeling techniques, focusing on four fundamental formalisms, namely featured transition systems, modal transition systems, product line calculus of communicating systems, and 1- selecting modal transition systems. We compare the expressive power and the succinctness of these formalisms.

Furthermore, we investigate adapting existing MBT methods for efficient testing of SPLs. As a part of this line of our research, we adapt the test case generation algorithm of one of the well-known black-box testing approaches, namely, Harmonized State Identification (HSI) method by exploiting the idea of delta-oriented programming. We apply the adapted test case generation algorithm to a case study taken from industry and the results show up to 50 percent reduction of time in test case generation by using the delta-oriented HSI method.

In line with our research on investigating existing MBT techniques, we compare the relative efficiency and effectiveness of the test case generation algorithms of the well-known Input-Output Conformance (ioco) testing approach and the complete ioco which is another testing technique used for input output transition systems that guarantees fault coverage. The comparison is done using three case studies taken from the automotive and railway domains. The obtained results show that complete ioco is more efficient in detecting deep faults (i.e., the faults reached through longer traces) in large state spaces while ioco is more efficient in detecting shallow faults (i.e., the faults reached through shorter traces) in small state spaces.

Moreover, we conduct a survey on sampling techniques, which have been proposed as a solution for handling the large number of products in analysis. In general, in product sampling a subset of products that collectively cover the behavior of the product line are selected. Performing tests on well selected sample set can reveal most of the faults in all products. We provide a classification for a catalog of studies on product sampling for software product lines. Additionally, we present a number of insights on the studied work as well as gaps for the future research.

Place, publisher, year, edition, pages
Halmstad: Halmstad University Press, 2019
Series
Halmstad University Dissertations ; 54
National Category
Computer Systems
Identifiers
urn:nbn:se:hh:diva-38921 (URN)978-91-88749-16-1 (ISBN)978-91-88749-17-8 (ISBN)
Public defence
2019-02-27, HAV, H22, Kristian IV:s väg 3, Halmstad, 13:00 (English)
Opponent
Supervisors
Available from: 2019-02-18 Created: 2019-02-15 Last updated: 2021-05-06Bibliographically approved

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