Machiel van der Bijl from the University of Twente in the Netherlands recently introduced a approach which is supposed to automate software testing. According to van der Bijl
Software testing easily accounts for a third to half of total development costs. Our automated method can improve product quality and significantly shorten the testing phase, thereby greatly reducing the cost of software development.
In software engineering the testers are responsible to obtain information about a system so that architects and developers can assess quality aspects. Thus, testing represents an important safety net for architecture and design activities. Unfortunately, development projects need to cope with the tradeoff between quality assurance and the amount of resources required for sufficient testing. One of the main reasons is that many tests have to be created manually. Testing activities are often reduced to save money and time. Or as a test expert once said “products are not released. They escape!”.
Van der Bijl claims to have found a way to automate testing and make it less expensive. His approach leverages Model-based Testing. According to Wikipedia
Model-based testing is the application of Model based design for designing and executing the necessary artifacts to perform software testing. This is achieved by having a model that describes all aspects of the testing data, mainly the test cases and the test execution environment. Usually, the testing model is derived in whole or in part from a model that describes some (usually functional) aspects of the system under development.
It needs to be mentioned, however, that many experts in testing such as Jeff Fry also have identified some liabilities of Model-based testing. Thus, the approach must first prove its feasibility and usability in practice.
Recently, van der Bijl has founded a company called Axini that offers support for test automation to customers.