Testing multimedia software using Hybrid Control Flowgraph-Petri Net approach

Abstract

Testing plays a vital role in software development. However, the recent emergence of multimedia software poses a new challenge to software developers. Traditional testing method cannot handle certain characteristics of multimedia software systems, such as those of temporal origin. This-thesis presents a Hybrid Control Flowgraph - Petri Net (CFPN) approach that can aid the testing of multimedia software systems. The detailed steps of the proposed CFPN approach are presented. A prototype tool was implemented for evaluation purposes. This prototype also demonstrates that the CFPN approach is practical and feasible. Several real-life multimedia software systems were employed to illustrate the strengths and the limitations of this new approach. It is anticipated that using the CFPN approach can achieve the following advantages: it can test the temporal aspects of a multimedia software application, which is at present not possible using the other traditional testing methods; it can generate test cases in an automatic manner; software testers can use one single testing method to test both the temporal and the structural characteristics of a multimedia software application in an integrated manner; it generates a consolidated Petri net as one of the intermediate outputs, and the strong analytical power of that Petri net can be potentially reused to analyze certain temporal properties.