Temporal Multi-view Contracts for Efficient Test Models

In this work we focus on practical aspects of test automation, namely reducing the model creation effort for model-based testing by exploiting the multi-view contract paradigm. We take into account explicitly the design views of the system and develop dedicated system test models by views in an incremental manner. The test models formalized as Uppaal Timed Automata refine the requirements of the views and are verified against the view contracts specified in Timed Computation Tree logic. As a novel theoretical contribution we extend the notion of assume/guarantee contracts by introducing temporal modalities. As a second contribution, we demonstrate the feasibility of the approach on an industrial climate control system testing case study. The improvement of testing process productivity is compared to that of developing a monolithic model empirically without extracting views. Finally, we discuss the usability aspects of the method in test development and outline the challenges.