@inproceedings{2377f3fe16454f4b879754734d39e389,
title = "Analyzing the impact of protocol changes on tests",
abstract = "Protocols governing communication among system components evolve during design and maintenance and need to be re-tested. For faster testing turnaround time, it is important that the consistency of the testing infrastructure with the protocol be preserved across changes. In this paper, we propose a state exploration based approach to identify the impacts of protocol changes on a given set of protocol tests. Protocols are modeled as a network of communicating finite state machines exchanging messages over bounded queues. Each machine denotes the behavior of an individual protocol component (controller). A protocol test is modeled as a sequence of inputs from the environment to the protocol controllers in an execution starting from a stable protocol state. A notion of consistency of a test relative to a protocol is introduced. Conditions under which a protocol change requires changing a test to preserve the consistency of the test are identified. Changes consisting of multiple atomic updates are analyzed to remove redundancies and their impact on tests is studied. A by-product of the proposed approach is a classification of tests based on how they are impacted by protocol changes, which can help users in regression test selection.",
keywords = "Changes, Communicating finite state machines, Evolution, Protocol, Test consistency",
author = "Mahadevan Subramaniam and Zolt{\'a}n Pap",
year = "2006",
doi = "10.1007/11754008_13",
language = "English (US)",
isbn = "3540341846",
series = "Lecture Notes in Computer Science (including subseries Lecture Notes in Artificial Intelligence and Lecture Notes in Bioinformatics)",
publisher = "Springer Verlag",
pages = "197--212",
editor = "Duale, {Ali Y.} and Uyar, {M. {\"U}mit} and Fecko, {Mariusz A.}",
booktitle = "Testing of Communicating Systems - 18th IFIP TC 6/WG 6.1 International Conference, TestCom 2006, Proceedings",
note = "18th IFIP TC 6/WG 6.1 International Conference on Testing of Communicating Systems, TestCom 2006 ; Conference date: 16-05-2006 Through 18-05-2006",
}