Conformiq

Conditional Coverage Heuristics Explained

Some time ago I wrote a short blog post about equivalence partitioning and boundary value analysis. Now with new version of Conformiq Designer coming out very soon we have introduced quite a few new testing heuristics and coverage options that are based on equivalence class partitioning I wanted to write about how Conformiq can use these new ...

Combinatorial Test Data Generation with Conformiq

Suppose a system model states that when a message comes in, it is forwarded out unchanged. This particular message has a number of fields, some of them integers, some strings. For some reason there is cause to suspect that the forwarding feature in the real implementation might be flawed, so we would like to have a number of different message ...

Distributed Test Generation

As detailed in a blog post I wrote a couple of months ago, the core of Conformiq DesignerTM is a custom crafted  semantics driven, symbolic state space exploration  algorithm for test generation from system models (because this is really the only known solution that robustly generates both test inputs and outputs from a system model without user ...

Selecting the Right MBT Tool: Key Factors

Interest towards model-based testing has increased quite significantly over the years as people have started to reach limits of traditional approaches and at the same time started to see and understand the benefits that applying MBT can have to the quality assurance function. In this blog post, I’m outlining what is really important when you are ...

ECP & BVA as Black Box Test Design Heuristics

Boundary value analysis is a refinement of the equivalence class partitioning method which again is one of the most generally applicable methods for black-box test design. The idea of equivalence class partitioning is to divide the all possible inputs to the system into “equivalence classes”, i.e. sets of inputs that should produce “analogous” ...

Test Generation Performance: Optimization

Test generation from system models is computationally very hard: Just generating input sequences that cover all the statements of a system model is theoretically an undecidable problem, meaning it can be never solved completely. This does not mean there couldn’t be an algorithm that handles most of the industrially relevant problem instances, but ...

Extended String Testing with RegEx

Quite recently we added a support for expressing ”regular expressions” in the Conformiq models. As this is quite an interesting topic, I’m detailing this feature a bit in this post. (more…)

Conformiq Blog: Improve Your Testing Game

I recently had an opportunity to present in ETSI’s UCAAT conference a way to use component-enabled MBT to overcome some of the shortcomings with current interoperability and end-to-end testing approaches. Because this raised quite a lot of interest in the conference, I wanted to write a short blog post about the subject. (more…)

Black Box vs. White Box Coverage

When talking about black-box and white-box testing, the term "box" refers to the system under test or SUT where the "color of the box" refers to the visibility that a tester has to the internal details of the SUT. When we talk about black-box testing, the tester judges the quality and correctness of the system without seeing inside this box ...

Stochastic Use Case Testing & Markov Chaining

In this post I'll go through the basics for "stochastic use case testing". It is sometimes called also "Markov chaining" or "Markov testing". There are variations of this technique, of course, but my aim here is to cover the common ground and share some thoughts on where methods like this are best applied. (more…)

Software Processes Accommodating MBT

People ask often from us if model-based testing with Conformiq Designer can be a good fit for e.g. Agile, Test-Driven Development, Scrum or RUP. Now instead of providing a short answer ("yes"), I will try to explain in this post how model-based testing changes a software process, where that change occurs, and what is its impact. I will also give ...

How Computers Design Tests Differently from Humans

One complaint against computer-generated test cases is that they differ from those designed by humans. Somehow, computer-generated test cases have a different feel to them, and it is sometimes difficult for humans to grasp what is the crux or focal point of a test case produced by a model-based test generator, such as Conformiq Designer™. But why ...