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From Requirements to Automated Acceptance Tests with the RSL Language

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Book cover Evaluation of Novel Approaches to Software Engineering (ENASE 2019)

Part of the book series: Communications in Computer and Information Science ((CCIS,volume 1172))

Abstract

Software testing can promote software quality. However, this activity is often performed at the end of projects where failures are most difficult to correct. Combining requirements specification activities with test design at an early stage of the software development process can be beneficial. One way to do this is to use a more structured requirements specification language. This allow to reduce typical problems such as ambiguity, inconsistency, and incorrectness in requirements and may allow the automatic generation of (parts of) acceptance test cases reducing the test design effort. In this paper we discuss an approach that promotes the practice of requirements specification combined with testing specification. This is a model-based approach that promotes the alignment between requirements and tests, namely, test cases and also low-level automated test scripts. To show the applicability of this approach, we integrate two complementary languages: (i) the ITLingo RSL (Requirements Specification Language) that is specially designed to support both requirements and tests rigorously and consistently specified; and (ii) the Robot language, which is a low-level keyword-based language for specifying test scripts. This approach includes model-to-model transformation processes, namely a transformation process from requirements (defined in RSL) into test cases (defined in RSL), and a second transformation process from test cases (in RSL) into test scripts (defined according the Robot framework). This approach was applied in a fictitious online store that illustrates the various phases of the proposal.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    http://robotframework.org/.

  2. 2.

    www.seleniumhq.org/.

  3. 3.

    http://automationpractice.com.

  4. 4.

    https://junit.org/junit5/.

  5. 5.

    https://cucumber.io/.

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Acknowledgements

This work was partially supported by national funds under FCT projects UID/CEC/50021/2019 and 02/SAICT/2017/29360.

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Faculdade de Engenharia da Universidade do Porto, Rua Dr. Roberto Frias, s/n, 4200-465, Porto, Portugal

    Ana C. R. Paiva & Daniel Maciel

  2. INESC TEC, Rua Dr. Roberto Frias, s/n, 4200-465, Porto, Portugal

    Ana C. R. Paiva

  3. INESC-ID, Instituto Superior Técnico, Universidade de Lisboa, Lisbon, Portugal

    Alberto Rodrigues da Silva

Authors
  1. Ana C. R. Paiva
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  2. Daniel Maciel
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  3. Alberto Rodrigues da Silva
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Ana C. R. Paiva .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Khalifa University of Science and Technology, Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates

    Ernesto Damiani

  2. Department of Computer Science, City University of London, London, UK

    George Spanoudakis

  3. Wroclaw University of Economics, Wroclaw, Poland

    Leszek A. Maciaszek

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Paiva, A.C.R., Maciel, D., da Silva, A.R. (2020). From Requirements to Automated Acceptance Tests with the RSL Language. In: Damiani, E., Spanoudakis, G., Maciaszek, L. (eds) Evaluation of Novel Approaches to Software Engineering. ENASE 2019. Communications in Computer and Information Science, vol 1172. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-40223-5_3

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-40223-5_3

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  • Online ISBN: 978-3-030-40223-5

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