ARTES
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TETReS: Testing of Event-Triggered Real-Time Systems
Project no: 9905-11
Sten F. Andler and Jonas Mellin
Högskolan Skövde, The Department of Computer Science
Updated application 990818, Support letter from ENEA DATA AB
Original application 990517 
Comments by evaluator 1, evaluator 2, ARTES board.
Support: 2 PhD student for 2 years decided 99-08-26.
Start 2000-01-01 with Birgitta Lindström and Robert Nilsson as graduate students.
Changes: Ragnar Birgisson change from project leader to industrial collaborator 991007.
Reports: First-year-report 01-11-06, support letter from ENEA, Final report
 

Industry contacts

Thomas Vesterlund thve@enea.se
ENEA Data AB
Täby
Project: Testing of Event-Triggered Real-Time Systems

Overview

The current industry practice for testing real-time applications is often based on case-specific ad-hoc techniques. At the same, time real-time systems are often employed in environments where their correctness is of great importance, which necessitates a rigorous approach to testing. In this context, the ability to test all anticipated behaviors is strongly desirable, but in general not feasible. Our approach is based on the hypothesis that the testability of event-triggered real-time systems can be improved by applying constraints on application behavior. This makes it possible to define an upper bound on the test effort, which enables full testing. However, even in a system that uses constraints to bound the test effort, it is often not possible to perform all the necessary testing within the allotted time frame. Therefore, test-case selection methods must be employed. Moreover, the criteria for such methods must be especially suited for real-time systems and measurement techniques for evaluating the quality of the selected test cases must be produced. In this project, prototypes of automated tools for test case generation and selection are built and evaluated.

Results and contributions

Thanks to the application process in connection with staffing of the ARTES project, we have attracted an employee at ENEA Data AB, Mats Grindal, to pursue graduate studies in a very closely related field. He has chosen to become an industrial Ph.D. student and is funded by the KK Foundation.

Co-operation

Members of the Enea Test group will contribute to this project through their experience and insight into current industry practice in testing of real-time systems, both in forming the problem definition and as a reference group. Further, Enea's broad range of industry contacts provides an excellent opportunity to transfer the technology produced by this project into industry. The addition of an industrial PhD student to the project facilitate our collaboration with ENEA.

Publications

  1. Birgisson, R. (September, 1998). Improving testability of applications in active real-time database environments. Master's thesis HS-IDA-MD-98-001, Dept. of Computer Science, University of Skövde.
  2. Birgisson, R., Mellin, J., and Andler, S. F. (December, 1999). Bounds on test effort for event-triggered real-time systems. In Proc. 6th Int'l Conf Real-Time Computing, Systems and Applications (RTCSA'99), pages 212--215, Hong Kong. IEEE Computer Press.
  3. B. Lindström, Reducering av testmöda vid testning av punktlighet i händelsestyrda realtidssystem, Final Year Project HS-IDA-EA-99-115, Dept Comp Sci, University of Skövde, 1999.
  4. B. Lindström, Methods for Increasing Software Testability,Master Thesis, Dept Comp Sci, University of Skövde, HS-IDA-MD-00-017, 2000.
  5. Mellin, J. (1998). Supporting system level testing of applications by active real-time database systems. In Proc. 2nd Int'l Workshop on Active, Real-Time, and Temporal Databases, ARTDB-97, number 1553 in LNCS. Springer-Verlag.
  6. R. Nilsson, Automated Test Case Execution for Real-Time Systems that are Constrained for Improved Testability, Final Year Project HS-IDA-EA-99-118, Dept Comp Sci, University of Skövde, 1999.
  7. R. Nilsson, Automated Selective Test Case Generation Methods for Real-Time Systems,Master Thesis, Dept Comp Sci, University of Skövde, HS-IDA-MD-00-010, 2000
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