Model-Based Built-In Tests

Assembling new software systems from prefabricated components as an attractive alternative to traditional software development practices is more and more investigated. Component technologies like CCM, .Net or EJB are accompanied by model-based approaches like MDA. However, still the emphasis is rather on system design and development and not on system validation and testing. The expected reductions in development time and effort will only arise if separately developed components can be made to work effectively together with minimal effort. Lengthy and costly in-situ verification and acceptance testing directly undermines the benefits of heterogeneous components and late system integration. This paper extends contract-based built-in tests where components are equipped with the ability to check their execution environment at run-time with approaches to derive built-in tests from system models, represent them on model level, and to generate executable tests from these test models. This model-based approach increases the automation level in generating and realizing built-in tests and therefore also increases the quality of and reduces needed resources for developing built-in tests.