Industrial and Academic Protocol Testing: the Gap and the Means of Convergence

Academic research has recently made significant advances in the generation of test sequences from formal specifications and in the development of computer-aided test tools, with the aims of improving the effectiveness of testing. The industry, with its own method of testing, is shipping to the customer communication software that still has bugs, even after it has been tested in the factory. It could therefore be expected that academic testing methods would be used to help improve its effectiveness. Surprisingly, these methods are seldom used in the industry. This paper describes the gap between the two classes of methods, the reasons why academic methods are not widely adopted by the industry, an assessment of industrial and academic methods, and the ways in which they can converge. It is intended to open up a discussion on these rarely addressed topics.