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Specification of Passive Test Cases Using an Improved T-EARS Language

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Software Quality: The Next Big Thing in Software Engineering and Quality (SWQD 2022)

Part of the book series: Lecture Notes in Business Information Processing ((LNBIP,volume 439))

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Abstract

Test cases that only observe the system under test can improve parallelism and detection of faults occurring due to unanticipated feature interactions. Traditionally, such passive test cases have been challenging to express, partly due to the use of complex mathematical notations. The T-EARS (Timed Easy Approach to Requirements Syntax) language prototype was introduced to respond to this and has received positive feedback from practitioners. However, the prototype suffered from few deficiencies, such as allowing non-intuitive combinations of expressions and usage of temporal specifiers that quickly got difficult to understand. This paper builds on the T-EARS prototype and input from experienced testers on a previous iteration of the language. The collected experience was applied to a new prototype using a structured update process, including a set of system-level requirements from a vehicular software system. The results include a new, improved grammar for the T-EARS language and a description of the evaluation semantics.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    https://github.com/harc/ohm.

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Acknowledgement

The work in this study has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation program under grant agreement Nos. 871319, 957212; from the Swedish Innovation Agency (Vinnova) through the XIVT project and from the ECSEL Joint Undertaking (JU) under grant agreement No. 101007350.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Mälardalen University, Västerås, Sweden

    Daniel Flemström, Wasif Afzal & Eduard Paul Enoiu

Authors
  1. Daniel Flemström
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  2. Wasif Afzal
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  3. Eduard Paul Enoiu
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Daniel Flemström .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Blekinge Institute of Technology, Karlskrona, Sweden

    Daniel Mendez

  2. Johannes Kepler University of Linz, Linz, Austria

    Manuel Wimmer

  3. TU Wien, Vienna, Austria

    Dietmar Winkler

  4. TU Wien, Vienna, Austria

    Stefan Biffl

  5. Software Quality Lab GmbH, Linz, Austria

    Johannes Bergsmann

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Flemström, D., Afzal, W., Enoiu, E.P. (2022). Specification of Passive Test Cases Using an Improved T-EARS Language. In: Mendez, D., Wimmer, M., Winkler, D., Biffl, S., Bergsmann, J. (eds) Software Quality: The Next Big Thing in Software Engineering and Quality. SWQD 2022. Lecture Notes in Business Information Processing, vol 439. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-04115-0_5

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-04115-0_5

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  • Online ISBN: 978-3-031-04115-0

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