Representation and automatic generation of state-transition mapping tree

Abstract

Among software testing techniques for the detection of software defects, state-transition-based testing which utilizes state diagrams is pretty well known and is being used widely. Such software testing techniques that are based on specifications of a software and perform various tests by utilizing a number of state diagrams are quite well known. According to different testing environment including individuals, applied methods, and the size of a perceived system, the resulting diagrams might highly show the discrepancy regarding some perspectives such as correctness, the quality of representation, and so on. This significantly affects the understanding of a system such that the system under consideration might be interpreted in different ways. The highly complex state diagrams can have a negative effect on the productive and positive utilization of state diagrams in the software system development including the analysis or the state-transition-based test process. Many state diagram-based process conventional approaches for automatic software analysis do not take the complexity problem into deep consideration so much. Moreover, the state diagrams generated by the methods that place a strong emphasis on complexity can generate inappropriate test cases according to the possible misled guidelines or the incorrect objectives. In this paper, we propose methods for resolution of the complexity problem in a state diagram without modification of the states or the transition relationships. In our proposed methods, we provide a representation model in which a software system can be interpreted in the context of a state diagram and an automatic generation method for the proposed representation. We also illustrate a case study for justification of plausibility of the proposed methods.