Data-flow integration testing adapted to runtime evolution in component-based systems

Abstract

Systems of Systems are large-scale information centric component-based systems. Because they can be more easily expressed as an information flow, they are built following the data-flow paradigm. These systems present high availability requirements that make their runtime evolution necessary. This means that integration and system testing will have to be performed at runtime as well. Already existing techniques for runtime integration and testing are usually focused on component-based systems which follow the client-server paradigm, and are not well suited for data-flow systems. In this paper we present virtual components, a way of defining units of data-flow behaviour that greatly simplifies the definition and maintenance of integration tests when the system evolves at runtime. We present and discuss an example of how to use virtual components for this purpose.

Towards a TTCN-3 Test System for Runtime Testing of Adaptable and Distributed Systems

“…They aim to ensure the correctness of the running system after reconfiguration. In fact, we distinguish approaches dealing with ubiquitous software systems [1], CBA systems [3][4][5], SOA systems [6,7], publish/subscribe systems [2] and autonomic systems [8].…”

Built-In Data-Flow Integration Testing in Large-Scale Component-Based Systems

“…In our earlier work [16] to test data-flow-based component systems and services, we introduced the notion of virtual component, which permits the determination of one data-flow (or a part of a flow) through a system, and its representation in terms of a component in its own right, i.e. the virtual component.…”

“…The algorithm to compute the set of components enclosed in a virtual component has been defined [16] so that in the typical cases its result is "intuitive". The set C of components contained in a virtual component specified by its sets of inputs P i and outputs P o is computed as follow:…”

“…The algorithm to determine which components are part of a flow, and hence a virtual component, was presented in [16]. In practice, only a limited combination of inputs and outputs will lead to a meaningful data-flow.…”

“…In earlier work, we have introduced the concept of a virtual component [16] that combines integration testing of dataflow-type systems with the advantages that built-in testing offers. In this article, we extend this work with the following contributions:…”