A Visual Formalism for Interacting Systems

TL;DR

This paper introduces Swim Lane Event-Driven Petri Nets, a visual formalism designed to model and support offline Model-Based Testing of complex interacting systems, such as embedded systems and Systems of Systems.

Contribution

It proposes a novel visual formalism specifically tailored for representing and testing interacting systems in a model-based testing framework.

Findings

Defines Swim Lane Event-Driven Petri Nets as a formalism for interaction modeling

Supports offline Model-Based Testing for complex systems

Provides a foundation for future tool development

Abstract

Interacting systems are increasingly common. Many examples pervade our everyday lives: automobiles, aircraft, defense systems, telephone switching systems, financial systems, national governments, and so on. Closer to computer science, embedded systems and Systems of Systems are further examples of interacting systems. Common to all of these is that some "whole" is made up of constituent parts, and these parts interact with each other. By design, these interactions are intentional, but it is the unintended interactions that are problematic. The Systems of Systems literature uses the terms "constituent systems" and "constituents" to refer to systems that interact with each other. That practice is followed here. This paper presents a visual formalism, Swim Lane Event-Driven Petri Nets, that is proposed as a basis for Model-Based Testing (MBT) of interacting systems. In the absence of available tools, this model can only support the offline form of Model-Based Testing.