Automatic generation of test cases for critical systems based on MC/DC criteria

Aerospace safety-critical software development demands a rigorous verification and validation process, for instance the use of MC/DC (Modified Condition/Decision Coverage) as requirements' coverage criteria. Although the MC/DC may reduce the number of test cases, the definition of test cases is still demanding in terms of effort, given the quantity of requirements that a critical system may have. We propose an approach to generate MC/DC test cases automatically from requirements written in XML format. The requirements include system functionalities expressed by state transitions triggered by Boolean expressions. We developed a prototype that implements the proposed approach and used it in an example of a real avionic system. The proposed approach was found to be very useful to reduce time and effort during the definition of test cases.