Relating Test Purpose to Formal Specifications: Towards a Theoretical Foundation of Practical Testing

The problems of current theoretical foundations of testing are its constraint to Finite State Machines (FSMs) and its inability to be related to real black box testing. In this paper we give a theoretical foundation of practical testing. This foundation also implies a test methodology. A test generation tool which is based on this methodology will be presented at the end. CR Categories and Subject Descriptors: C.2.0 [Computer-Communication Networks]: General; C.2.2 [Computer-Communication Networks]: Network Protocols; D.2.5 [Software Engineering: Testing and Debugging] General Terms: Verification, Theory, Standardization Additional Key Words: Test Generation