TY - JOUR
T1 - A data flow-based structural testing technique for FBD programs
AU - Jee, Eunkyoung
AU - Yoo, Junbeom
AU - Cha, Sungdeok
AU - Bae, Doohwan
N1 - Funding Information:
This work was partially supported by the MKE (Ministry of Knowledge Economy), Korea, under the ITRC (Information Technology Research Center) support program supervised by the IITA (Institute of Information Technology Advancement) (IITA-2009-(C1090-0902-0032)), and also partially supported by a Korea University Grant and the Korean Research Foundation Grant funded by the Korean Government (KRF-2008-331-D00524).
PY - 2009/7
Y1 - 2009/7
N2 - With increased use of programmable logic controllers (PLCs) in implementing critical systems, quality assurance became an important issue. Regulation requires structural testing be performed for safety-critical systems by identifying coverage criteria to be satisfied and accomplishment measured. Classical coverage criteria, based on control flow graphs, are inadequate when applied to a data flow language function block diagram (FBD) which is a PLC programming language widely used in industry. We propose three structural coverage criteria for FBD programs, analyze relationship among them, and demonstrate their effectiveness using a real-world reactor protection system. Using test cases that had been manually prepared by FBD testing professionals, our technique found many aspects of the FBD logic that were not tested sufficiently. Domain experts, having found the approach highly intuitive, found the technique effective.
AB - With increased use of programmable logic controllers (PLCs) in implementing critical systems, quality assurance became an important issue. Regulation requires structural testing be performed for safety-critical systems by identifying coverage criteria to be satisfied and accomplishment measured. Classical coverage criteria, based on control flow graphs, are inadequate when applied to a data flow language function block diagram (FBD) which is a PLC programming language widely used in industry. We propose three structural coverage criteria for FBD programs, analyze relationship among them, and demonstrate their effectiveness using a real-world reactor protection system. Using test cases that had been manually prepared by FBD testing professionals, our technique found many aspects of the FBD logic that were not tested sufficiently. Domain experts, having found the approach highly intuitive, found the technique effective.
KW - Function block diagram
KW - Programmable logic controller
KW - Software testing
KW - Structural testing
KW - Test coverage criteria
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=67349191485&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1016/j.infsof.2009.01.003
DO - 10.1016/j.infsof.2009.01.003
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:67349191485
SN - 0950-5849
VL - 51
SP - 1131
EP - 1139
JO - Information and Software Technology
JF - Information and Software Technology
IS - 7
ER -