Lutess: a specification-driven testing environment for synchronous software

Several studies have shown that automated testing is a promising approach to save significant amounts of time and money in the industry of reactive software. But automated testing requires a formal framework and adequate means to generate test data. In the context of synchronous reactive software, we have built such a framework and its associated tool-Lutess-to integrate various well-founded testing techniques. This tool automatically constructs test harnesses for fully automated test data generation and verdict return. The generation conforms to different formal descriptions: software environment constraints, functional and safety-oriented properties to be satisfied by the software, software operational profiles and software behavior patterns. These descriptions are expressed in an extended executable temporal logic. They correspond to more and more complex test objectives raised by the first pre-industrial applications of Lutess. This paper concentrates on the latest development of the tool and its use in the validation of standard feature specifications in telephone systems. The four testing techniques which are coordinated in Lutess uniform framework are shown to be well-suited to efficient software testing. The lessons learnt from the use of Lutess in the context of industrial partnerships are discussed.