Selecting Test Sequences For Partially-Specified Nondeterministic Finite State Machines

In order to test the control portion of communication software, specifications are usually first abstracted to state machines, then test cases are generated from the resulting machines. The state machines obtained from the specification are often both partially-specified and nondeterministic. We come out with a method of generating test suites for the software that is modeled by partially-specified nondeterministic finite state machines (PNFSMs). On the basis of intuitive notions, a conformance relation, called quasi-equivalence, is introduced for such machines, which serves as a guide to test generation. Our method is also applicable to completely-specified deterministic machines, partially-specified deterministic machines, and completely-specified nondeterministic machines, which are typical classes of PNFSMs. When applied to such classes of machines, this method usually yields smaller test suites with full fault coverage for each class of machines than the existing methods for the ..