Abstract
Traceability is mandatory in developing safety-critical systems as prescribed by safety guidelines, such as DO-178C, and it is vital for avionics industries. Testing is mandatory for requirement validation to ensure the safety and quality of a software product. Requirement traceability all along the development cycle is essential. Requirements’ traceability and test generation fields have been studied extensively. This paper presents a granular traceability approach between low level requirements (LLRs) and test cases that is supported by a model-based test case generation. From LLR specifications we use model-to-model transformation to obtain an extended finite state machine (EFSM) and its corresponding control flow graph (CFG) and data flow graphs (DFGs) that can support various granularity levels of traceability. The uniqueness of the proposed traceability approach is the creation of traceability elements at finer granularity during test case generation that satisfies MC/DC and Du path coverage criteria, and their retrieval for coverage analysis. The granularity level reached in this work corresponds to decision nodes, edges, predicates, and variables that are located on their source artifacts (CFG, DFG, EFSM). Several traceability techniques are used such as IDs and Links to create and retrieve traceability elements, coverage elements on models, transformation records, and artifacts that ensure both the forward traceability of requirements by construction and backward traceability using graph exploration techniques.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
References
http://www.rtca.org. RTCA/DO-178C (2011) “Software Considerations in Airborne Systems and Equipment Certification”, December 13, DO-332 Object-Oriented Technology and Related Techniques Supplement to DO-178C and DO-278A, DO-331
IEEE Computer Society. ANSI/IEEE Standard 830-1984, 1984
Gotel, O.C.Z., Finkelstein, A.C.W.: An analysis of the requirements traceability problem. In: Proceedings of ICRE94, 1st International Conference on Requirements Engineering. 1994; Colorado Springs, Co; IEEE CS Press (1994)
Gotel, O., et al.: Traceability fundamentals. Softw. Syst. Traceability (2012)
Pinheiro, F.A.C., Goguen, J.A.: An object-oriented tool for tracing requirements. IEEE Softw. 13(2), 52–64 (1996)
Santiago, I., Vara, J.M., de Castro, M.V., Marcos, E.: Towards the effective use of traceability in model-driven engineering projects. In: Ng, W., Storey, V.C., Trujillo, J.C. (eds.) ER 2013. LNCS, vol. 8217, pp. 429–437. Springer, Heidelberg (2013). https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-41924-9_35
Schwarz, H., Ebert, J., Winter, A.: Graph-based traceability: a comprehensive approach. Softw. Syst. Model. Springer (2010)
Paige, R.F.: Traceability in model-driven safety critical software engineering. In: 6th ECMFA Traceability Workshop (2010)
Paige, R.F., Drivalos, N., Kolovos, D.S., et al.: Rigorous identification and encoding of trace-links in model-driven engineering. Softw. Syst. Model 10, 469–487 (2011). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10270-010-0158-8
Matthias, R., Hubner, M.: Traceability-driven model refinement for test case generation, engineering of computer-based systems. In: 2005. ECBS'05. 12th IEEE International Conference and Workshops on the. IEEE (2005)
Ramesh, B., Jarke, M.: Toward reference models for requirements traceability. IEEE Trans. Softw. Eng. 27(1), 58–93 (2011)
Krzysztof, W., Ahlberg, L., Persson, J.: On the delicate balance between RE and testing: experiences from a large company, requirements engineering and testing (RET). In: 2014 IEEE 1st International Workshop on. IEEE (2014)
Noack, T., Helke, S., Karbe, T.: Reuse-based test traceability: automatic linking of test cases and reusing requirements. Int. J. Adv. Softw. 7(3/4) (2014)
Unterkalmsteiner, M., Feldt, R., Gorschek, T.: A taxonomy for requirements engineering and software test alignment. ACM Trans. Softw. Eng. Methodol. (TOSEM) 23(2), 16 (2014)
Mustafa, N., Labiche, Y.: The need for traceability in heterogeneous systems: a systematic literature review. IEEE COMPSAC 1(2017), 305–310 (2017)
Unified Modeling Language User Guide, The (2 ed.). Addison-Wesley. 2005. p. 496. ISBN 0321267974. , See the sample content, look for history
UML. Omg.org. Accessed 10 June 2023
SysML. omg.org. Accessed 10 June 2023
Architecture Analysis and Design Language, Software Engineering Institute, Carnegie-Mellon University, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, USA. Archived 2013-11-01 at the Wayback Machine
Tufail, H., Masood, M.F., Zeb, B., Azam, F., Anwar, M.W.: A systematic review of requirement traceability techniques and tools. In: 2017 2nd International Conference on System Reliability and Safety (ICSRS) (2017)
Kesserwan, N., Dssouli, R., Bentahar, J., Stepien, B., Labrèche, P.: From use case maps to executable test procedures: a scenario-based approach. Softw. Syst. Model. 18(2), 1543–1570 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10270-017-0620-y
Kesserwan1, N., Al-Jaroodi, J.: Model-driven framework for requirement traceability. (IJACSA) Int. J. Adv. Comput. Sci. Appl. 12(2) (2021)
Mustafa, N., Labiche, Y., Towey, D.: Traceability in systems engineering: an avionics case study. In: 2018 IEEE 42nd Annual Computer Software and Applications Conference (COMPSAC), Tokyo, Japan, pp. 818–823 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1109/COMPSAC.2018.10345
Dssouli, R., Saleh, K., Aboulhamid, E.M., En-Nouaary, A., Bourhfir, C.: Test development for communication protocols towards automation. Comput. Netw. 31(17), 1835–1872 (1999)
Dssouli, R., Khoumsi, A., Elqortobi, M., Bentahar, J.: Testing the control-flow, data-flow and time aspects of communication systems, a survey. In: Book Chapter in Advances in Testing Communication Systems, Atif Memon, Ed. 1, vol. 17, pp. 95–155. Elsevier (2017). ISBN 978-0-12-812228-0
Yang, R., Chen, Z., Zhang, Z., Xu, B.: EFSM-based test case generation: sequence, data, and oracle. Int. J. Softw. Eng. Knowl. Eng. 25(4), 633–667 (2015). (© World Scientific)
Wu, J., Yan, J., Zhang, J.: Automatic test data generation for unit testing to achieve MC/DC criterion. In: Proceedings of the IEEE Eighth International Conference on Software Security and Reliability (SERE), pp. 118–126, San Francisco, USA, June 2014
Elqortobi, M., El-Khouly, W., Rahj, A., Bentahar, J., Dssouli, R.: Verification and testing of safety-critical airborne systems: a model-based methodology. Comput. Sci. Inf. Syst. 17(1), 271–292 (2020)
El Qortobi, M., Rahj, A., Bentahar, J., Dssouli, R.: Test generation tool for modified condition/decision coverage: model based Testing. In: SITA 2020: 38:1–38:6, Proceedings of ACM 2020 (2020). ISBN 978-1-4503-7733-1
Rahj, A., Elqortobi, M., Bentahar, J., Dssouli, R.: Test generation tool design for modified condition/decision coverage: model based approach. Int. J. Comput. Sci. Appl. Technomath. Res. Found. 18(1), 1–25 (2021)
Rahj, A.: EFSM-based Test Suite Generation for MC/DC Compliant Systems: Tool Design, Master of Applied Science Thesis, Concordia University (2023)
Rozenberg, G.: Handbook of Graph Grammars and Computing by Graph Transformations, vol. 1–3. World Scientific Publishing (1997). ISBN 9810228848
Ehrig, H., et al.: Chapter 4. Algebraic approaches to graph transformation. Part II: single pushout approach and comparison with double pushout approach. In: Rozenberg, G. (ed.). Handbook of Graph Grammars and Computing by Graph Transformation. World Scientific, pp. 247–312. CiteSeerX (1997). 10.1.1.72.1644. ISBN 978-981-238-472-0
Kalaji, A.S., Hierons, R.M., Swift, S.: Generating feasible transition paths for testing from an extended finite state machine (EFSM). In: International Conference on Software Testing Verification and Validation, ICST, pp. 230–239 (2009)
Cok, D.R.: jSMTLIB: tutorial, validation and adapter tools for SMT-LIBv2. In: Bobaru, M., Havelund, K., Holzmann, G.J., Joshi, R. (eds.) NASA Formal Methods. NFM 2011. LNCS, vol. 6617, pp. 480–486. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg (2011). https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-20398-5_36
Yano, T., Martins, E., de Sousa, F.L.: MOST: a multi-objective search-based testing from EFSM. In: Proceedings of the 4th International Conference on Software Testing, Verification and Validation Workshops, IEEE Computer Society, Berlin, Germany, pp. 164–173 (2011)
Ting, S.: Automated coverage-driven test data generation using dynamic symbolic execution, Software Security and Reliability (SERE). In: 2014 Eighth International Conference on IEEE (2014)
Weyuker, E.J.: The oracle assumption of program testing. In: Proceedings of the 13th International Conference on System Sciences (ICSS), Honolulu, HI, pp. 44–49, January 1980
Barr, E.T., Harman, M., McMinn, P., Shahbaz, M., Yoo, S.: The oracle problem in software testing: a survey. IEEE Trans. Softw. Eng. 41(5), 507–525 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1109/TSE.2014.2372785,November
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2023 The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG
About this paper
Cite this paper
Elqortobi, M., Rahj, A., Bentahar, J. (2023). Granular Traceability Between Requirements and Test Cases for Safety-Critical Software Systems. In: Younas, M., Awan, I., Grønli, TM. (eds) Mobile Web and Intelligent Information Systems. MobiWIS 2023. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol 13977. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-39764-6_14
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-39764-6_14
Published:
Publisher Name: Springer, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-031-39763-9
Online ISBN: 978-3-031-39764-6
eBook Packages: Computer ScienceComputer Science (R0)