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An approach to testing specifications

Published: 20 March 1983 Publication History

Abstract

An approach to testing the consistency of specifications is explored, which is applicable to the design validation of communication protocols and other cases of step-wise refinement. In this approach, a testing module compares a trace of interactions obtained from an execution of the refined specification (e. g. the protocol specification) with the reference specification (e. g. the communication service specification).
Non-determinism in reference specifications presents certain problems. Using an extended finite state transition model for the specifications, a strategy for limiting the amount of non-determinacy is presented.
An automated method for constructing a testing module for a given reference specification is discussed. Experience with the application of this testing approach to the design of a Transport protocol and a distributed mutual exclusion algorithm is described.

References

[1]
(Bart 80) K. A. Bartlett and D. Rayner, "The certification of data communication protocols", Proc. IEEE Symp. on Comp. Network Protocols, Washington DC, May 1980, pp. 12--17.]]
[2]
(Boch 80a) G. V. Bochmann and C. A. Sunshine, "Formal methods in communication protocol design", IEEE Trans. COM-28, 4 (April 1980), pp. 624--631.]]
[3]
(Boch 80b) G. V. Bochmann, "A General Transition Model for Protocols and Communication Services", IEEE Trans. on Communications, Vol. COM 28, 4 (April 1980), pp. 643--650.]]
[4]
(Boch 81a) G. V. Bochmann, E. Cerny and C. Lacaille, "Formal specification of a Transport service", Département d'IRO, Université de Montréal, also WASH-9 of ISO TC97/SC16/WG1 and hoc group on FDT.]]
[5]
(Boch 81b) G. V. Bochmann and A. Léveillé, "Formal specification of a Transport protocol", Département d'IRO, Université de Montréal.]]
[6]
(Boch 82) G. V. Bochmann and M. Raynal, "Structured specification of communicating systems", Publ. 428, Département d'IRO, Université de Montréal, 1982.]]
[7]
(Diaz 79) J. M. Ayache, P. Azéma and M. Diaz, "Observer: a concept for detecting at run time control errors in concurrent systems", LAAS, presented at the IEEE Fault Tolerant Computing Symposium, Madison, June 1979.]]
[8]
(Gagn 81) M. Cagné, "Un compilateur pour un langage de spécification", Document de travail 120, Dec. 1981.]]
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(Gogu 80) J. Goguen, "Thoughts on specification, design and verification", ACM Software Eng. Notes 5, 3 (July 1980), pp. 29-33.]]
[10]
(ISO 81) "Tutorial on formal description techniques (FDT)", ISO TC97/SC 16 N, (Canada)]]
[11]
(Jard 81) C. Jard, "Définition d'un modéle de simulation pour la validation de protocoles", Note technique CNET Lannion, - Département EVP - NT/LAA/SLC/49 (June 1981).]]
[12]
(Jard 82) C. Jard, "Spécification et validation d'un algorïthme distribué d'exclusion mutuelle. Mise en oeuvre de la simulation: méthode et résultats", Note technique CNET Lannion, Département EVP, NT/LAA/SLC/93 (July 1982).]]
[13]
(Lamp 78) L. Lamport, "Time, clocks and the ordering of events in a distributed system", Comm. ACM 21, 7 (July 1978), pp. 558-565.]]

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Published In

cover image ACM SIGPLAN Notices
ACM SIGPLAN Notices  Volume 18, Issue 8
Proceedings of the ACM SIGSOFT/SIGPLAN software engineering symposium on high-level debugging
August 1983
208 pages
ISSN:0362-1340
EISSN:1558-1160
DOI:10.1145/1006142
Issue’s Table of Contents
  • cover image ACM Conferences
    SIGSOFT '83: Proceedings of the symposium on High-level debugging
    March 1983
    217 pages
    ISBN:0897911113
    DOI:10.1145/1006147
Permission to make digital or hard copies of all or part of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for components of this work owned by others than ACM must be honored. Abstracting with credit is permitted. To copy otherwise, or republish, to post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission and/or a fee. Request permissions from [email protected]

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Association for Computing Machinery

New York, NY, United States

Publication History

Published: 20 March 1983
Published in SIGPLAN Volume 18, Issue 8

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