An Input Space Modeling Method for Software Testing Considering Timing

Specification based testing is a common method in software testing. Specification based testing is divided into behavior-based testing, such as finite state machine method; and input-based testing, such as random testing, combination testing, decision table testing, equivalence class testing, boundary value testing method and so on. At present, there are many modeling methods for behavior-based testing and test cases can be generated automatically through these models. However, for these input-based testing methods, test cases are generated manually by searching for parameters and parameter values, which is too inefficient. To solve this problem, we want to improve the efficiency of input-based testing methods by automatically generating test cases. Therefore, this paper presents a software input space model that can represent parameter values and constraint relationships as the basis of automatic generation of test cases. Some safety-critical software tests need to consider the input timing of parameters, so we also express the input timing of parameters in the input space model. Then we propose the process of modeling the input space, which is finally expressed in the form of a directed graph. The values of parameters and the input timing of parameters are expressed on the edges of the directed graph, and the constraints between parameters are described by the way of node splitting, and all valid test sequences are represented by the path traversing the graph. Finally, the proposed input space modeling method is applied to a real test project to demonstrate the feasibility of the method.