Recommended Model Based Testing Tools

Question

Does anyone have any suggestions on what Model Based Testing Tools to use? Is Spec Explorer/SPEC# worth it's weight in tester training?

What I have traditionally done is create a Visio Model where I call out the states and associated variables, outputs and expected results from each state. Then in a completely disconnected way, I data drive my test scripts with those variables based on that model. But, they are not connected. I want a way to create a model, associate the variables in a business friendly way, that will then build the data parameters for the scripts.

I can't be the first person to need this. Is there a tool out there that will do basically that? Short of developing it myself.

Answer 1

I think an updated version of the "Spec Explorer for Visual Studio" power tool is supposed to be released soon - it's much easier to ramp up on than the current version, but still takes some time to learn.

If you want to start smaller, nmodel (also from microsoft) is a good place to start.

Answer 2

You should try the "MaTeLo" tool of All4Tec. www.all4tec.net

"MaTeLo is a test cases generator for black box functional and system testing. Conformed to the Model Based Testing approach, MaTeLo uses Markov chains for modeling the test. This statistic addin allows products validation in a Systematic way. The efficiency is achieved by a reduction of the human resources needed, an increase of the model reuse and by the enhancement of the test strategy relevance (due to the reliability target). MaTeLo is independent and user-friendly, offers to the validation activities to pass from test scripting to real test engineering and to focus on the real added value of testing: the test plans"

You can ask an evaluation licence and try by yourself.

You can find some exemples here : http://www.all4tec.net/wiki/index.php?title=Tutorials

Answer 3

A colleague of mine have made this tool, http://mbt.tigris.org/ and its being used in large scale testing environments for years. It's Open Source and all..

Updating: Here are short whitepaper: http://www.prolore.se/filer/whitepaper/MBT-Agile.pdf

This tool is great with MBT, yED a free modelling software.

Answer 4

You might find the following answer to a similar question helpful:

http://testing.stackexchange.com/questions/92/how-to-get-started-with-model-based-testing

In it, I mention:

UML Pad http://web.tiscali.it/ggbhome/umlpad/umlpad.htm A list of free UML Tools: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Free_UML_tools Our Pairwise and combinatorial test case generator (which generates tests for you automatically based on a model you create - even if you don't create a UML model): http://hexawise.com

Incidentally, as explained in the answer I link to above, I focus my energies (research, tool development focus, passion, etc.) on the second part of your question - generating efficient and effective sets of tests that maximize coverage in a minimum number of test cases.

Justin (Founder of Hexawise)

Answer 5

Check out TestOptimal. It offers full cycle Model-Based Testing with built-in data driven testing and combinatorial testing right within the model. It has graphical modeling and debugging which you can play the model and it graphically animates the model execution. You can link state/transition to the requirements. Models can be re-purposed for load testing with no changes. It can even create full automated MBT for web applications without any coding/scripting. Check out this short slide presentation: http://TestOptimal.com/tutorials/Overview.htm

Answer 6

I can tell you that the 2010 version of Spec Explorer that requires The Professional version of Visual Studio is a great tool, assuming you already have Visual Studio. The older version of spec explorer was good, but the limitation was that if you ended up modeling a system that was non-finite, you were out of luck.

The new version has improved techniques for looking at 'slices' of the model to the point where you have finite states. Once you have the finite states, you can generate the test cases.

The great thing is that as you change the model and re-slice your model, it's straightforward to re-generate tests and re-run them. This certainly beats the manual process any day.

I can't compare this tool to other toolsets, but the integration with Visual Studio is invaluable. If you don't use Visual Studio, you may have limited success.