Fastest: a new tool for the Z notation
Maximiliano Cristiá
I'm glad to announce that Flowgate Consulting has released a new version
of Fastest.
Fastest is a model-based testing (MBT) tool for the Z notation. It is
the first tool giving an automatic, although partial, implementation of
Phil Stocks and David Carrington's Test Template Framework (TTF), a MBT
framework for the Z formal notation. The TTF is well suited for unit
testing.
The tool receives a Z specification in LaTeX format using the CZT
package. The specification is transformed into an internal
representation more amenable to parsing and static analysis. Then, users
have to enter a list of the operations to test as well as the tactics to
apply to each of them. In a third step Fastest generates the testing
tree of each operation. After the trees are generated, users can browse
them and their test classes, and they can prune any node both
automatically or manually. Once the users are done with pruning, they
can instruct Fastest to find one abstract test case for each leaf in all
the test trees.
Fastest is publicly available at http://www.flowgate.net in the Tools
section. (http://www.flowgate.net/?lang=en&seccion=herramientas)
The tool is implemented in Java, so it should run on any platform
running Java SE Runtime Environment 1.6 or newer. The distribution
includes a rather complete user manual.
If you're interested in the more theoretical aspects of the TTF and
Fastest you can read:
A Framework for Specification-Based Testing by Phil Stocks and David
Carrington (in IEEE Transactions on Software Engineering Volume 22,
Issue 11, November 1996).
Implementing and Applying the Stocks-Carrington Framework for
Model-Based Testing by Maximiliano Cristiá and Pablo Rodríguez Monetti
(in Lecture Notes In Computer Science; Vol. 5885, 2009).
Please, feel free to contact me for any questions or comments.
Regards,
Maxi
--
Maximiliano Cristiá
Flowgate Consulting
Maipu 778 - Piso 1 - Of. 10
(2000) Rosario - Santa Fe - ARGENTINA
TEL: +54-341-4112511
http://www.flowgate.net
