Title
Model-based testing of NASA’s GMSEC, a reusable framework for ground system software
Abstract
We present an empirical study in which model-based testing (MBT) was applied to the software bus of NASA’s Goddard Mission Service Evolution Center (GMSEC), a reusable software framework. The goal was to study the feasibility of using MBT on a real-world software system that was designed to be flexible. GMSEC has three levels of flexibility: 1) loose application coupling through a software bus based on the publish–subscribe architectural style, 2) language independence by providing APIs to the bus in several programming languages, 3) middleware independence by providing wrappers for several middlewares that are supported by the software bus. The novelty brought forward in this paper is that one model and one set of generated test cases were used as the basis to test the software bus for behavioral consistency across multiple programming languages and middleware wrappers. The comparison of costs and benefits from using finite state machines (FSM) vs. extended FSMs (EFSM) when used for MBT on a real-world system is also novel. The case study shows that it was feasible, even for a programmer who neither knew MBT nor the system under test, to successfully apply MBT to a flexible system such as GMSEC and that MBT could within reasonable effort detect non-trivial defects in a fielded system.
Year
DOI
Venue
2015
10.1007/s11334-015-0254-6
ISSE
Keywords
Field
DocType
Middleware, Wrapper, Software bus, Automated test case generation, Model-based testing, Finite-state machines, Extended finite-state machines
Middleware,System under test,Software engineering,Systems engineering,Computer science,Extended finite-state machine,Software system,Software,Model-based testing,Test case,Software bus,Embedded system
Journal
Volume
Issue
ISSN
11
3
1614-5054
Citations 
PageRank 
References 
1
0.35
16
Authors
5
Name
Order
Citations
PageRank
Vignir Gudmundsson150.83
Christoph Schulze2337.78
Dharmalingam Ganesan316413.87
Mikael Lindvall4120395.86
Robert Wiegand530.78