Automatic Model Driven Animation of SCR Specifications

Abstract

Abstract. This paper introduces automatic model driven animation, a novel approach to validate requirements specifications. This approach, here applied to SCR specifications, is based on graphical animation. Automatic model driven animation consists in automatically deriving scenarios from requirements specifications; these scenarios are used to animate critical system behaviors through a graphical interface. Animation is useful at the very early stages of systems development to better understand models and requirements, to gain confidence that specifications capture informal requirements, and to detect faults. We introduce a technique, exploiting model checkers, to automatically generate animation sequences starting from requirements specifications, and we present a prototype tool for the generation and animation of scenarios.

An extended fault class hierarchy for specification-based testing

“…Gargantini and Heitmeyer 1999] have formalized SCR requirements with logic-model semantics so that they can be analyzed by model checkers such as the Symbolic Model Verifier (SMV). For example, Gargantini and Riccobene [2003] formalized the system's safety properties or functional requirements in Boolean expressions in DNF, based on which animation goals are defined in a way analogous to the derivation of test scenarios. formalize the notion of dangerous actions into logic expressions, and develop coverage criteria for generating new test sets or assessing existing test sets by means of mutation analysis.…”

“…In recent years, there has been an increasing interest and emphasis on specification-based testing [Chang et al 1996;Dick and Faivre 1993;Gargantini and Riccobene 2003;Hierons 1997;Offutt et al 2003;Paradkar et al 1997;Stock and Carrington 1996] and the use of a fault-based approach to generate test cases from software specifications [Black et al 2000a;Chen et al 1999;DeMillo et al 1978;Kuhn 1999;Offutt et al 1996;Tai 1996;Tsuchiya and Kikuno 2002]. A common approach is first to hypothesize certain common types of faults that may be committed by the programmer, and then generate test cases that can detect these faults.…”

Integrating Animation-Based Inspection Into Formal Design Specification Construction for Reliable Software Systems

“…The simulator of UPPAAL can explore the state space of the model in a step-by-step fashion. Riccobene proposed an automatically driven approach to animating formal specifications in Parnas' SCR tabular notation [51]. One important feature of this work is the adoption of a model checker to help find counter-examples that contain a state not satisfying the property to be established by animation.…”