Adapting TDL to Provide Testing Support for Executable DSLs.

Abstract

Testing is one of the most prevalent and successful verification and validation (V&V) techniques used in the field of software engineering. While a large number of testing frameworks exist for general-purpose programming languages, providing testing facilities for any given executable Domain Specific Language (xDSL) remains a costly and challenging task. In this context, a standard such as the Test Description Language (TDL) appears as a suitable foundation for the definition of a generic testing approach for xDSLs. Unfortunately, TDL does not provide the domain-specific concepts required to write test cases for a given xDSL and does not include any model execution facilities. Our contribution addresses these limitations and thereby provides a fully generic testing approach for xDSLs based on TDL. Required TDL domain-specific concepts are automatically inferred from the xDSL definition through a model transformation into TDL. Model execution facilities are provided through the definition of a refined operational semantics for TDL. The application of our approach on 5 different xDSLs shows its generality and that it can successfully be used for testing executable models.

Advanced testing and debugging support for reactive executable DSLs

“…In this section, we first describe the executable DSLs considered in the scope of this paper. Afterward, we introduce an overview of the Test Description Language (TDL) as well as its adaptation in our previous work for providing testing support for non-reactive xDSLs [20]. To motivate the proposed approach, we also present a running example.…”

“…A first set of approaches aim to provide testing frameworks that are specific to selected xDSLs, such as fUML activity diagrams [30,18] or service-based Business Process Model and Notation (BPMN) processes [26], A second set of approaches aim to provide more generic testing frameworks, i. e. directly compatible with a wide range of xDSLs. Such approaches are much more versatile and can target large categories of DSLs such as grammar-based compiled DSLs [41] or interpreted xDSLs [20].…”

“…A desirable solution would be a generic approach applicable to a wide range of reactive xDSLs. In our previous work [20], we proposed a first generic testing approach for non-reactive xDSLs-albeit without any debugging or test quality measurement facilities. Continuing this research direction, the present paper proposes three new core contributions to support testing for reactive xDSLs as well as offering interactive debugging and test quality measurement techniques:…”

“…2. To execute the event-driven test cases on the reactive models, we extend the TDL test execution engine of our previous work [20] by integration with the reactive model execution approach proposed in [24].…”

Model Transformation Testing and Debugging: A Survey

“…A future line which seems interesting to explore is to reuse ideas from executable modeling language engineering which provide not only the execution engine for a given language but also additional tools such as a debugger, logger, etc. Based on such meta-frameworks, MT languages may be recreated in order to provide out-of-the-box tool support for testing and debugging as well as dedicated interfaces for additional tool support [147,173,219]. Challenge 11: MT Testing and Debugging Unit.…”