Automatic generation of test cases from activity diagrams for UML based testing (UBT)

Activity diagrams are one of UML behavioural models suitable for system testing because it has the capacity to effectively describe the behaviours of systems under development. In this paper, a technique is proposed that generates test cases from activity diagrams by constructing an activity flow tree (AFT) which stores all the information extracted from the model file of the diagram through the help of a parser. Then, we applied an algorithm to generate test cases from the constructed tree. Test cases were generated based on the elements of activity diagrams such as activity sequences, associated descriptions and conditions. The proposed technique generated accurate test cases that completely tallied with the modeled requirements in the diagram. We utilized all-paths, basic pair paths, conditions, branches and transition criteria for generating test cases using ATM withdrawal operation software as a case study.