Proteum/FSM: a tool to support finite state machine validation based on mutation testing

The quality of the VV&T-Verification, Validation and Testing-activity is extremely relevant to the software development process. Testing techniques and criteria have been investigated in the context of VV&T of reactive systems specifications, providing mechanisms to the VV&T activity quality assessment. The establishment of a low-cost, effective testing and validation strategy and the development of supporting tools have been pursued by many researchers for coding and specification as well. This paper discusses the main architectural and operational aspects of a tool, named Proteum/FSM, that supports the application of mutation testing for validating reactive systems specifications based on finite state machines (FSM). Further improvements and research issues are briefly discussed.