Abstract
Software testing can promote software quality. However, this activity is often performed at the end of projects where failures are most difficult to correct. Combining requirements specification activities with test design at an early stage of the software development process can be beneficial. One way to do this is to use a more structured requirements specification language. This allow to reduce typical problems such as ambiguity, inconsistency, and incorrectness in requirements and may allow the automatic generation of (parts of) acceptance test cases reducing the test design effort. In this paper we discuss an approach that promotes the practice of requirements specification combined with testing specification. This is a model-based approach that promotes the alignment between requirements and tests, namely, test cases and also low-level automated test scripts. To show the applicability of this approach, we integrate two complementary languages: (i) the ITLingo RSL (Requirements Specification Language) that is specially designed to support both requirements and tests rigorously and consistently specified; and (ii) the Robot language, which is a low-level keyword-based language for specifying test scripts. This approach includes model-to-model transformation processes, namely a transformation process from requirements (defined in RSL) into test cases (defined in RSL), and a second transformation process from test cases (in RSL) into test scripts (defined according the Robot framework). This approach was applied in a fictitious online store that illustrates the various phases of the proposal.

Abstract
This paper presents Alloy4Fun, a web application that enables online editing and sharing of Alloy models and instances (including dynamic ones developed with the Electrum extension), to be used mainly in an educational context. By introducing secret paragraphs and commands in the models, Alloy4Fun allows the distribution and automated assessment of simple specification challenges, a mechanism that enables students to learn the language at their own pace. Alloy4Fun stores all versions of shared and analyzed models, as well as derivation trees that depict how they evolved over time: this wealth of information can be mined by researchers or tutors to identify, for example, learning breakdowns in the class or typical mistakes made by Alloy users. Alloy4Fun has been used in formal methods graduate courses for two years and for the latest edition we present results regarding its adoption by the students, as well as preliminary insights regarding the most common bottlenecks when learning Alloy (and Electrum). © Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2020.

Abstract
Software requirements engineers and testers generally define technical documents in natural languages, but this practice can lead to inconsistencies between the documentation and the consequent system implementation. Previous research has shown that writing requirements and tests in a structured way, with controlled natural languages like RSL, can help mitigate these problems. This study goes further, discussing new experiments carried out to validate that RSL (with its complementary tools, called “ITLingo Studio”) can be applied in different systems and technologies, namely the possibility of applying the approach to integrate test automation capabilities in security testing. The preliminary conclusion indicates that, by combining tools such as ITLingo Studio and the Robot Framework, it is possible to integrate requirements and test specifications with test automation, and that would bring benefits in the testing process’ productivity. © Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2020.

Abstract

Abstract
Reverse engineering may be helpful for extracting information from existing apps to understand them better and ease their maintenance. Reverse engineering may be performed by a static analysis of the apps’ code but, when the code is not available, a dynamic approach may be useful. This paper presents a tool that allows extracting dynamically, in a complete black-box approach, the explored activities of Android applications. It is an extension of iMPAcT testing tool that combines reverse engineering, dynamic exploration, and testing. The extracted information is later used to construct an HFSM (Hierarchical Finite State Machine) with three distinct levels of abstraction. The top-level shows the interactions needed to traverse the activities of the mobile application. The middle level shows the screens traversed while in a specific activity. The bottom level shows all screens traversed during exploration. This information helps to understand better the application which facilitates its maintenance and errors fixing. This paper provides a complete description of the tool, its architecture and the results of some case studies conducted on mobile apps publicly available on the Google Store. © Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2020.

Abstract
In today’s software industry, systems are constantly changing. To maintain their quality and to prevent failures at controlled costs is a challenge. One way to foster quality is through thorough and systematic testing. Therefore, the definition of adequate tests is crucial for saving time, cost and effort. This paper presents a framework that generates software test cases automatically based on user interaction data. We propose a data-driven software test generation solution that combines the use of frequent sequence mining and Markov chain modeling. We assess the quality of the generated test cases by empirically evaluating their coverage with respect to observed user interactions and code. We also measure the plausibility of the distribution of the events in the generated test sets using the Kullback-Leibler divergence. © 2020, Springer Nature Switzerland AG.