A Model Driven Approach to Automate Software Regression Testing Using Incremental Model Transformation

The increase in complexity and the rate of technological changes in modern software development have led to a demand for systematic methods that raise the abstraction level for system maintenance and regression testing. Model Driven Engineering (MDE) has promised to reduce extra coding efforts in software maintenance activities using traceable change management, especially in rapidly changing application. The paper presents a Z-notation based framework, called Changed-based Regression Testing (ChbRT), for formal modeling of regression testing in the context of MDE. The framework proposes to automatically propagate the changes from a software specification to testing artifacts in order to preserve consistency after system evolution. The framework is enriched by providing a new category of coverage metrics for change-based regression testing. The proposed framework is expected to be beneficial in both platform independent and specific levels of ChbRT by identifying the suitable coverage according to available testing resources. The accuracy and efficiency of the proposed framework have been evaluated and analyzed on three case studies.