Title: Goal-oriented testing for MASs

Authors: C.D. Nguyen, A. Perini, P. Tonella

Addresses: Fondazione Bruno Kessler – IRST Via Sommarive, 18 – 38050 Trento, Italy. ' Fondazione Bruno Kessler – IRST Via Sommarive, 18 – 38050 Trento, Italy. ' Fondazione Bruno Kessler – IRST Via Sommarive, 18 – 38050 Trento, Italy

Abstract: As Multi-Agent Systems (MASs) are increasingly applied in complex distributed applications such as financial and healthcare services, assurance needs to be given to the user that the implemented MASs operate properly, i.e., they meet their specifications and the stakeholder|s expectations. Testing is an important and widely applied technique in practice to reach this goal. Current Agent-Oriented Software Engineering (AOSE) methodologies address testing only partially. Some of them exploit Object-Oriented (OO) testing techniques, based on a mapping of agent-oriented abstractions into OO constructs; this may require additional development effort and introduce anomalies. Moreover, a structured testing process for AOSE methodologies is still missing. In this paper we introduce a testing methodology, called Goal-Oriented Software Testing (GOST), for MAS. The methodology specifies a testing process that complements goal-oriented analysis and design. Furthermore, GOST provides a systematic way of deriving test cases from goal-oriented specifications and techniques to automate test case generation and their execution.

Keywords: goal-oriented testing; MAS testing; multi-agent systems; agent-based systems; software testing.

DOI: 10.1504/IJAOSE.2010.029810

International Journal of Agent-Oriented Software Engineering, 2010 Vol.4 No.1, pp.79 - 109

Published online: 02 Dec 2009 *

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