Trace Reduction and Pattern Analysis to Assist Debugging in Model-Based Testing

Model-based testing (MBT) is a technique for generating test cases from test models. One of the benefits of MBT is the ability to have a computer generate and execute extensive test sets from the test models, achieving high coverage. However, when such large test sets are automatically generated and executed, the resulting failure traces can be very large and difficult to debug for root cause analysis. In this paper, we present a technique for minimizing the length of a failure trace, creating variants of it, and for pattern mining the trace variants to assist in root cause analysis. We demonstrate the technique on a model of a GSM SIM card.