Use case-based testing of product lines

ABSTRACT

This paper presents PLUTO, a simple and intuitive methodology to manage the testing process of product lines, described as Product Lines Use Cases (PLUCs). PLUCs are an extension of the well-known Cockburn's Use Cases, a notation based on natural language descriptions of requirements. The proposed test methodology is based on the Category Partition method, and can be used to derive a generic Test Specification for the product line, and a set of relevant test scenarios for a customer specific application.

REFERENCES

• 1: Bertolino, A., Fantechi, A., Gnesi, S., Lami, G. and Maccari,, A., Use Case Description of Requirements for Product Lines. REPL'02, Essen, Germany, Avaya Labs Technical Report ALR-2002-033, September 2002.
• 2: Alistair Cockburn, Writing Effective Use Cases, Addison-Wesley Longman Publishing Co., Inc., Boston, MA, 2000
• 3: Halmans, G., and Pohl, K., Communicating the Variability of a Software-Product Family to Customers. Journal of Software and Systems Modeling 2, 1 (2003), 15--36.
• 4: Michel Jaring , Jan Bosch, Representing Variability in Software Product Lines: A Case Study, Proceedings of the Second International Conference on Software Product Lines, p.15-36, August 19-22, 2002
• 5: Mehdi Jazayeri , Alexander Ran , Frank van der Linden, Software architecture for product families: principles and practice, Addison-Wesley Longman Publishing Co., Inc., Boston, MA, 2000
• 6: Frank van der Linden, Software Product Families in Europe: The Esaps & Café Projects, IEEE Software, v.19 n.4, p.41-49, July 2002 [doi>10.1109/MS.2002.1020286 ]
• 7: T. J. Ostrand , M. J. Balcer, The category-partition method for specifying and generating fuctional tests, Communications of the ACM, v.31 n.6, p.676-686, June 1988 [doi>10.1145/62959.62964]

INDEX TERMS

Primary Classification:
  D. Software
  D.2 SOFTWARE ENGINEERING
      D.2.1 Requirements/Specifications

Additional Classification:
  D. Software
  D.2 SOFTWARE ENGINEERING
      D.2.5 Testing and Debugging
          Subjects: Testing tools (e.g., data generators, coverage testing)

General Terms:
Verification

Keywords:
black box testing, product lines, use cases