Development and Execution of POU-Oriented Performance Tests for IEC 61131-3 Control Software

Due to performing complex and crucial tasks in industry, the control software should be created in a way ensuring possibly the highest quality. It can be increased by modeling, standardized implementation, and precise testing. The latter should verify not only functional requirements, but also nonfunctional, such as performance. In the paper, a concept of agile POU-oriented performance testing is proposed, which is dedicated to the IEC 61131-3 standard. The approach allows to measure and analyze execution times of particular Program Organization Units. The concept supports multiple target platforms and allows to take performance into account during early development stages, as well as to perform regression testing. The proposed process consists of a few stages, namely modeling (using SysML diagrams), implementation (in a dedicated test definition language), and execution (by a dedicated testing framework). The approach has been introduced into the CPDev engineering environment for programming industrial controllers.

[1]  Lothar Thiele,et al.  Influence of different abstractions on the performance analysis of distributed hard real-time systems , 2009, Des. Autom. Embed. Syst..

[2]  Hu Jin,et al.  Performance Testing Based on Time Complexity Analysis for Embedded Software , 2008, 2008 International Conference on Embedded Software and Systems.

[3]  Marcin Jamro,et al.  Communication Performance Tests in Distributed Control Systems , 2013, CN.

[4]  Connie U. Smith,et al.  Introduction to Software Performance Engineering: Origins and Outstanding Problems , 2007, SFM.

[5]  Birgit Vogel-Heuser,et al.  Automated test case generation approach for PLC control software exception handling using fault injection , 2011, IECON 2011 - 37th Annual Conference of the IEEE Industrial Electronics Society.

[6]  Marcin Jamro,et al.  Testing Procedure for IEC 61131-3 Control Software , 2013, PDeS.

[7]  Marcin Jamro,et al.  IEC 61131-3 programmable human machine interfaces for control devices , 2013, 2013 6th International Conference on Human System Interactions (HSI).

[8]  Gero Decker,et al.  Performance Engineering for Enterprise Applications , 2008 .

[9]  Laurie A. Williams,et al.  Incorporating Performance Testing in Test-Driven Development , 2007, IEEE Software.

[10]  Ulrich Herzog,et al.  Formal Methods for Performance Evaluation , 2002, European Educational Forum: School on Formal Methods and Performance Analysis.

[11]  Paul Singleton.  Performance Modelling — What, Why, When and How , 2002 .

[12]  Marcin Jamro,et al.  An approach to SysML modeling of IEC 61131-3 control software , 2013, 2013 18th International Conference on Methods & Models in Automation & Robotics (MMAR).

[13]  N. Chapman,et al.  Performance engineering , 1997 .

[14]  A. Zoitl,et al.  Agile testing concepts based on keyword-driven testing for industrial automation systems , 2012, IECON 2012 - 38th Annual Conference on IEEE Industrial Electronics Society.

[15]  Marin Litoiu,et al.  Model-based performance testing: NIER track , 2011, 2011 33rd International Conference on Software Engineering (ICSE).

[16]  N. Chapman,et al.  Performance engineering : Systems integration , 1997 .

[17]  Oscar Castillo,et al.  Trends in Intelligent Systems and Computer Engineering , 2008 .

[18]  Marcin Jamro.  Graphics editors in CPDev environment , 2012 .