A Formal Model for Generating Integrated Functional and User Interface Test Cases

Abstract

Black box testing focuses on the core functionality of the system, while user interface testing is concerned with details of user interactions. Functional and user interface test cases are usually generated from two distinct system models, one for the functionality and one for the user interface. As a result, test cases derived from either model capture only partial system behavior and as such, are inadequate for testing full system behavior. We propose a method for formally integrating the model for the system functionality and the model for the user interface. The resulting composite model is then used to generate more complete test cases, capturing detailed user interactions as well as secondary system interactions. In this paper we employ use cases for modeling system functionality, and task models for describing user interfaces.