Open Interface, GA, Oracles: Exciting new Features for DCRTT

Date: 16 Jul 2019

BSSE is proud to announce exciting new features for its testing tool DCRTT:

  • An open tool interface,
  • test data generation using genetic algorithms, and
  • support for use of oracles in automated testing.

Open Tool Interface

The Open Tool Interface allows direct export of test case candidates as test drivers for a variety of tools. The interface is flexible in that it can be configured to generate output for tools not yet supported. However, DCRTT already includes pre-defined interfaces for Cantata and VectorCAST.

Test Data Generation using Genetic Algorithms

DCRTT supports test data generation using genetic algorithms for interfaces using unstructured byte streams, such as is present when accepting data from network interfaces. Test data covering otherwise difficult to cover code elements can be automatically generated this way.

Support for Use of Oracles

DCRTT now also includes a basic interface for specifying oracles for automated testing. An oracle is a function which evaluates the observed output of the function under test to determine whether that output is correct given the input provided to the function. Thus, test results from automatic stimulation can automatically be extended towards functional evaluation of the software tested.

In addition, coverage of oracles is also recorded and given information about the association of oracles to requirements and requirements tracing relationships can be traced back to low-level- and high-level-requirements.

Oracles have to be provided externally and are not automatically generated by DCRTT, as they represent the intended behaviour of the software under test and can thus not be derived from the source code itself.

In principle, methods for automatically deriving these oracles from machine-readable and sufficiently formalised requirements, if present, can be supported.