Model-Driven Method for Performance Testing

Performance testing is an aspect of software testing which evaluates the behaviour of a system under certain workload. It becomes critical for the systems which are available to a large number of users simultaneously. This research study demonstrates the usage of the model-driven architecture (MDA) to performance testing. We do this by extending our existing tool to generate test cases which are capable of checking performance specific behaviour of a system. In this paper from sequence diagrams, test cases are generated. First, we model the sequence diagram along with some parameters specific constraints, such as acceptable response time for an interaction which implements a particular functionality of the system. Next automated test cases are created based on the model mentioned above by MDA transformation tools. These tests cases are executable, and can be used to conduct performance testing of the system. We have provided a prototype implementation of this method using the Tefkat and MOFScript transformation tools (MTCG-P). This paper provides details of this method and the tool that we have developed. MTCG-P has been applied to an example (ATM Simulation System) to demonstrate its viability and effectiveness.