Extending Conformiq MBT Beyond Functional Testing

Sep 9, 2015 | Blogs

Conformiq is a technology provider for advanced Model Based Test (MBT) automation. At the heart of this capability is our engine which automatically generates functional test cases from a model of the system you are testing. The technology assumes no implementation details of the system and we validate whether the given system conforms to its design and functional specification. The test cases that the technology generates are black-box by nature, which means that they depend on the model and the interfaces of the system under test, but not on the internal structure of the implementation. The model can be at different levels of abstraction allowing you to use MBT in different phases from component testing to system testing. Interfaces and integrations with external modeling tools, requirement and test management tools, as well as test execution systems close the loop providing a full model-driven SDLC application lifecycle management platform for our customers.

Going beyond Conformiq’s focus area of functional test design, some of our users have extended their use of our software to also cover non-functional areas of testing such as performance testing. (For reference, non-functional requirements specify criteria used to judge the operational aspects such as capacity, stability, performance, interoperability and availability, to name few areas.) They have used Conformiq in performance related non-functional requirements to assess speed, scalability, load, throughput and response times of a system. These users have achieved the additional test case designs by mapping non-functional requirements such as performance characteristics into a functional model from which Conformiq will generate tests.  The idea is simply to treat non-functional requirements as functional ones and model these requirements. The Conformiq MBT tool will then design and generate performance tests that fulfill the modeled requirements. For example, a simple performance requirement of response time could be proportional to number of concurrent users:

  • If < 100 users, response time less than 0.5 seconds
  • If < 500 users, response time less than 2.5 seconds
  • etc.

Thus the technology in the Conformiq MBT software can add even greater value than only functional test design when you have complicated non-functional requirements that can be translated into functional requirements.

Below you will find three links to publicly available material that demonstrates the benefits of MBT both in functional and performance testing: