An Improved Algorithm for Building the Characterizing Set

FSM-based testing can obviously reduce the cost of test generation. So many FSM-based test generation methods have been presented to generate effective test sequences. Most of them need to construct the characterizing set of the FSM. However, there are two disadvantages in the existing algorithm for building the characterizing set. One is that time efficiency of the algorithm is hard access to our satisfaction. Another is that the obtained characterizing set may contain some redundancies. To overcome these two disadvantages, we propose the RTMD algorithm to obtain the characterizing set from the FSM, and give four theorems to ensure the correctness and effectiveness of the RTMD algorithm. Then we perform a case study to compare the existing algorithm with the RTMD algorithm. The results show that the RTMD algorithm has shorter time-consuming than the traditional algorithm as well as obtains more effective characterizing set.