Test generation for sequential nets of Abstract State Machines with information passing

•We propose a test generation approach for distributed systems with information passing.•The generation is performed only considering the single subsystems.•The tests for the single subsystems are combined to obtain system valid traces.•The policy used to combine the tests influences the completeness of the approach.•The approach, compared to techniques considering the whole system, is very efficient.

Model-based test generation consists in deriving system traces from specifications of systems under test. There exist several techniques for test generation, which, however, may suffer from scalability problems. In this paper, we assume that the system under test can be divided in several subsystems such that only one subsystem is active at the time. Moreover, each subsystem decides when and to which other subsystem to pass the control, by also initializing the initial state of the next subsystem in a desired way. We model these systems and we show how it is possible to generate tests in a very efficient way that exploits the division of the entire system in subsystems. Test generation for the whole system is performed by visiting each subsystem and generating tests for it. The tests are combined in order to obtain valid system traces. We show how several visiting policies influence the completeness of the test generation process.