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JAT: a test automation framework for multi-agent systems

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Published
  • Roberta Coelho
  • Elder Cirilo
  • Uirá Kulesza
  • Arndt von Staa
  • Awais Rashid
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Publication date2007
Host publicationSoftware Maintenance, 2007. ICSM 2007. IEEE International Conference on
PublisherIEEE Publishing
Pages425-434
Number of pages10
ISBN (print)978-1-4244-1256-3
<mark>Original language</mark>English
Event23rd IEEE International Conference on Software Maintenance (ICSM 2007) - Paris, France
Duration: 2/10/20075/10/2007

Conference

Conference23rd IEEE International Conference on Software Maintenance (ICSM 2007)
Country/TerritoryFrance
CityParis
Period2/10/075/10/07

Conference

Conference23rd IEEE International Conference on Software Maintenance (ICSM 2007)
Country/TerritoryFrance
CityParis
Period2/10/075/10/07

Abstract

Automated tests have been widely used as a supporting mechanism during software development and maintenance activities. It improves the confidence on software releases as it seeks to uncover regression bugs, and serves as a live documentation which is very useful when evolving systems. Concerning multi agent systems (MASs), some characteristics such as agent autonomy and asynchronous message-based interaction bring a degree of non-determinism which presents new testing challenges. This paper proposes JAT, a framework for building and running MASs test scenarios, which relies on the use of aspect-oriented techniques to monitor the autonomous agents during tests and control the test input of asynchronous test cases. The tool has been developed on top of JADE, a widely used agent platform implemented in Java. We have used JAT on testing 3 different MASs. Our experience shows that JAT can be used to build test scenarios which can achieve high fault-detection effectiveness.