Application of Formal Concept Analysis in Model-Based Testing

Model-based testing is a software testing technique that derives a suite of test cases from a model which represents the behavior of a software system. By executing a set of model-based test cases, the conformance of the implementation of the target system to its specification can be validated. However, as there may be large, sometimes infinite, number of operational scenarios that could be generated from a given model, an important issue of model-based testing is to determine a minimal set of test cases which provides sufficient test coverage. By using the Formal Concept Analysis (FCA) mechanism, we could analyze the coverage of the test cases and eliminate those redundant ones. This systematic approach can help reduce the test suite whilst still maintain the sufficiency of test coverage.