Synthesizing Test Cases for Narrowing Specification Candidates

Fuente: arXiv
Guardado en:
Detalles Bibliográficos
Autores principales: Cunha, Alcino, Macedo, Nuno
Formato: Preprint
Publicado: 2025
Materias:
Acceso en línea:
Etiquetas: Agregar Etiqueta
Sin Etiquetas, Sea el primero en etiquetar este registro!
_version_ 1866914169271353344
author Cunha, Alcino
Macedo, Nuno
author_facet Cunha, Alcino
Macedo, Nuno
contents This paper proposes a technique to help choose the best formal specification candidate among a set of alternatives. Given a set of specifications, our technique generates a suite of test cases that, once classified by the user as desirable or not, narrows down the set of candidates to at most one specification. Two alternative solver-based algorithms are proposed, one that generates a minimal test suite, and another that does not ensure minimality. Both algorithms were implemented in a prototype that can be used generate test suites to help choose among alternative Alloy specifications. Our evaluation of this prototype against a large set of problems showed that the optimal algorithm is efficient enough for many practical problems, and that the non-optimal algorithm can scale up to dozens of candidate specifications while still generating reasonably sized test suites.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2511_19177
institution arXiv
publishDate 2025
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Synthesizing Test Cases for Narrowing Specification Candidates
Cunha, Alcino
Macedo, Nuno
Software Engineering
D.2.1; D.2.4; D.2.5
This paper proposes a technique to help choose the best formal specification candidate among a set of alternatives. Given a set of specifications, our technique generates a suite of test cases that, once classified by the user as desirable or not, narrows down the set of candidates to at most one specification. Two alternative solver-based algorithms are proposed, one that generates a minimal test suite, and another that does not ensure minimality. Both algorithms were implemented in a prototype that can be used generate test suites to help choose among alternative Alloy specifications. Our evaluation of this prototype against a large set of problems showed that the optimal algorithm is efficient enough for many practical problems, and that the non-optimal algorithm can scale up to dozens of candidate specifications while still generating reasonably sized test suites.
title Synthesizing Test Cases for Narrowing Specification Candidates
topic Software Engineering
D.2.1; D.2.4; D.2.5
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2511.19177