Simulation Based Test Adequacy Criteria for Distributed Systems

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Abstract:

Developers of distributed systems routinely construct discrete-event
simulations to help understand and evaluate the behavior of
inter-component protocols. Simulations are abstract models of systems
and their environments, capturing basic algorithmic functionality at
the same time as they focus attention on properties critical to
distribution, including topology, timing, bandwidth, and overall
scalability. We claim that simulations can be treated as a form of
specification, and thereby used within a specification-based testing
regime to provide developers with a rich new basis for defining and
applying system-level test adequacy criteria. We describe a framework
for evaluating distributed system test adequacy criteria, and
demonstrate our approach on simulations and implementations of three
distributed systems, including DNS, the Domain Name System.

Notes:

(c) ACM, 2006. This is the author's version of the work. It is posted here by permission of the ACM for your personal use. Not for redistribution. The definitive version was published in Proceedings of the 14th ACM SIGSOFT Symposium on Foundations of Software Engineering (November, 2006).