Towards more industrially relevant academic researches into testing of communicating systems1
Academic researches have made significant advances in the generation of test sequences from formal specifications and in the development of computer-aided test tools with the aims of improving the effectiveness of testing communicating systems. However, this state-of-the-art research is not necessarily the state-of-the-practice; these methods and tools are seldom used in the communications industry. The main reason is that they do not quite address the problems facing testers in the industry; and testers generally regard academic testing techniques impractical and irrelevant to solving real problems. There is a big gap between testing practice and research results published in journals and reported at conferences. This paper presents an argument that academic researches into testing of communicating systems need to become more industrially relevant, describes some means by which this change can be facilitated and suggests some research topics that are relevant to the industry. It aims to help effect of change in the direction of academic researches into testing of communicating systems.
formal method formal description techniques conformance testing test sequence generation