Model-based testing: Achievements and future challenges

Software systems are part of our everyday life and they become more complex day by day. The ever-growing complexity of software and high quality requirements pose tough challenges to quality assurance. The quality of a software system can be measured by software testing. However, if manually done, testing is a time-consuming and error-prone task. Especially test case design and test execution are the most cost-intensive activities in testing. In the previous 20 years, many automation tools have been introduced for automating test execution by using test scripts. However, the effort for creating and maintaining test scripts remains. Model-based testing (MBT) aims at improving this part by systematizing and automating the test case design. Thereby, test cases or automatable test scripts can be generated systematically from test models. MBT is already known for several years, but it currently gains a great momentum due to advanced tool support and innovative methodological approaches. This chapter aims at giving an overview of MBT and summarizes recent achievements in MBT. Experiences with using the MBT approach are illustrated by reporting on some success stories. Finally, open issues and future research challenges are discussed