DOI: 10.17587/prin.8.51-57

On Development of Models of a Dynamic External Environment for Testing the Complex Software Products

V. V. Lipaev, Institute for System Programming of the Russian Academy of Sciences, 109004, Moscow, Russian Federation

Some kinds of software projects are aimed at managing the dynamic objects (which change their state with time). Such objects can be placed in an environment that is external to the main programs of the large target system, managing of which is their task. Such software complexes can be divided into two actively interacting parts: part that manages the main processes of the target systems and part that implements control of dynamic objects in an external environment. Examples of objects of external environment are the following models: flight of spaceships, airport flight control points, air defense system objects, aviation on-board control system. One of the tasks when developing such software complexes is creating and testing the above noted models of dynamically managing the objects in an external environment. Due to complexity of the full-scale modeling of such objects dynamics in real conditions, software emulators of external environments are used during the stages of modeling and production. For this task, the modeling test benches are created. They include problem-oriented software complexes which are modeling the objects in a dynamic external environment. It is worth noting that such complexes may be significantly larger than the corresponding managing software products being tested. The first Soviet Union software models of the external environment, imitating flight of various aircraft types in an external environment, were created already in 1960s for testing the air defense system of the country. As examples of external environment models to be tested for qualifying for the requirements for the functions and characteristics of the managing programs complexes, one can take control systems of spaceships, and also aircraft flight and air traffic control systems. For complex debugging and testing of the program complexes of such control systems, imitation of all changes of information coming from the external environment should be implemented if needed. For modeling test benches of the air traffic control centers, sources of information were radars and personnel of the aircrafts. As a result, a need for dynamically imitating the interaction of a row of diverse objects, taking into account their influences on the control object, has emerged. Attempts to developing the requirements for models of a dynamic external environment, components generating dynamic models of an environment, and specialities of testing the customized software projects in interaction with external environment models are presented in the article, based on the authors experience in developing such models.

Keywords: customized software project, external environment of managing software products, dynamic objects of an external environment, testing the objects of an external environment

pp. 51–57

For citation:
Lipaev V. V. On Development of Models of a Dynamic External Environment for Testing the Complex Software Products, Programmnaya Ingeneria, 2017, vol. 8, no. 2, pp. 51—57.