Build Tests from Models with New Developer Tool From DevLabs

Spec Explorer has been released on DevLabs to help you build out testing using Model-Based Testing techniques. The new tool helps you modeling software behavior and generating test suites. It helps you build thorough, consistent, and extensible tests.

Models can be viewed as graphical renderings to understand and analyze the expected system behavior and communicate it to others. Model size can be scoped with regular expressions. The generated test suites can be run standalone in the Visual Studio test framework or other unit test frameworks.

Spec Explorer 2010 is a tool that extends Visual Studio for modeling software behavior, analyzing that behavior by graphical visualization, model checking; and generating standalone test code from models. Behavior is modeled in two ways:

• Writing rule machines in C# (with dynamic data-defined state spaces)
• Defining scenarios as action patterns in a regular-expression style

This technique enables you to slice out test cases from large state machines by defining relevant scenarios.

Find out more at Spec Explorer: A Model-Based Testing tool. For more information,, dowlonads, and links to Channel 9 videos, see Spec Explorer.

Bruce D. KyleISV Architect Evangelist | Microsoft Corporation