Modeling Executable Test Actors: Exploratory Study Done in Executable and Translatable UML

Model-based testing presents new challenges in how to perform software testing due to the fact that models offer testing on several abstraction levels. This is largely an unexplored area. We propose a pattern to construct test actors which can be used to test Platform-Independent Models. In addition, these test actors can also be automatically transformed to Platform-Specific Model level to test the implementation deployed on target. Our work is one step in the direction of permitting early testing without any waste, since the test models can be reused at a lower level of abstraction.