Generating feasible transition paths for testing from an extended finite state machine (EFSM) with the counter problem

Abstract

The extended finite state machine (EFSM) is a powerful approach for modeling state-based systems. However, testing from EFSMs is complicated by the existence of infeasible paths. One important problem is the existence of a transition with a guard that references a counter variable whose value depends on previous transitions. The presence of such transitions in paths often leads to infeasible paths. This paper proposes a novel approach to bypass the counter problem. The proposed approach is evaluated by being used in a genetic algorithm to guide the search for feasible transition paths (FTPs).