A Non-intrusive, Platform-Independent Capture/Replay Test Automation System

Firmware, such as BIOS, is in essence software. Unlike hardware testing, there is only one method to test software, designing test cases to go through code and then verifying the results with expected outcomes. When code is changed frequently, automatic regression testing is critical to ensure that the changes do not introduce new faults. One popular cost-effective approach to automated regression testing is capturing the testing behaviors and then replaying the tests to assert the correctness of the changed code. Unfortunately, most capture/replay tools are designed for software under general purpose O.S., such as Windows and Linux. They are inapplicable to many other systems, like embedded systems for example. In this paper, a capture/replay testing tool called KORAT is proposed. KORAT is platform independent and non-intrusive, meaning there is no performance interference caused by KORAT´s capture and replay. A real application of KORAT to industrial computer manufacturing will be described.