Patent ID: 8219573

Claim:
A test case generation apparatus including a computer readable storage medium containing a set of instructions that cause a computer processor to perform a data analyzing process which generates a test case for a target system, comprising: a first input unit configured to input a state transition diagram of the target system, the state transition diagram representing first transitions between a plurality of states in the target system; a second input unit configured to input a mapping function that maps a given state to a value within a certain range; a grouping unit configured to map each of the states included in the state transition diagram with the mapping function to obtain a plurality of mapping values, and groups the states in the state transition diagram based on the mapping values by classifying the states having same mapping value into same group to generate a plurality of groups each including one or more states; a contracted state transition diagram generator configured to specify any two groups among the groups, set a second transition from one group of the two groups to the other group when there is at least one first transition from one of states included in the one group to one of states included in the other group, and by iterating these specifying and setting, generate a contracted state transition diagram that represents second transitions between the groups; a representative transition path generator configured to generate a representative transition path which is a sequence of the second transitions by tracing each second transition in the contracted state transition diagram starting from a predetermined group in a serial manner; a transition path converting unit configured to sequentially select each second transition in the representative transition path in a traced order, for each selected second transition, find a first transition which has same transition source state as one of states included in a transition source group of the selected second transition, has same transition destination state as one of states included in a transition destination group of the selected second transition and has same transition source state as a transition destination state of an immediately found first transition, and generate a transition path which is a sequence of each found first transition; and an output unit configured to output the transition path as the test case.