Keynote: Advances in test automation, SEETEST 2008, Sofia, Bulgaria, July 2008.

Ina Schieferdecker

The quality of software-based systems becomes increasingly important as the influence of software in almost every area of economy and society is growing. Today, software is used in safety- and security-critical domains for systems where reliability, robustness, trustworthiness, etc. are essential. Due to the variety of system quality aspects (as for example defined by ISO 9126), there are numerous techniques such as constructive, analytical, or process-oriented techniques that are used to assess and assure system quality in the system development and maintenance process. However, analytical methods and in particular dynamic testing approaches remain a central and often also exclusive instrument to check the resulting quality of the overall system. For years, experts have been convinced that test design is the central element to successful and meaningful software testing. In the meantime, however, it has become apparent that testing requires all the typical elements of software engineering: tests are software-based systems themselves and need to be engineered, designed, verified, validated, and executed like any other software-based system. Specialities of test systems involve the ability to control, stimulate, observe, and evaluate the system under test. Although standard development and programming techniques are mostly applicable, specific solutions for the development of test systems respecting their peculiarities seem reasonable. This motivated the development and standardisation of specialised test specification and test implementation languages, which the talk will review, and put into the context of model-based and model-driven testing approaches.