To the Development of Dynamic External Environment for Custom Software Tests

V. V. Lipaev, Professor, Senior Scientific Researcher, e-mail: vlip28@mail.ru, Institute for System Programming of the Russian Academy of Sciences, Moscow

Some software is designed to control dynamic (changing their state in time) objects. Such objects can be placed in the environment which is external to the main software of the system (and this software is specifically designed to control this system). Software packages like that can be divided into two actively interacting parts — the control part of the target system and dynamic part which implements the dynamic objects management in external environment. Different models like spacecraft flight models; models of air-traffic control stations in and around airport; models of objects of antiaircraft defense systems; avionics models — all these models can be external environment objects which are used during development and testing of intricately organized software packages as well as the whole target system. In a process of such software packages development one of the tasks is the creation and testing of mentioned before models of dynamic objects management in external environment. Due to the complexity of full-scale modelling of such objects' dynamics in actual practice, software simulators are used during the design and production stages. Modeling test desks are created for these purposes. They [desks] include problem-oriented complexes of the programs which model objects in the dynamic external environment. It should be noted that such complexes can be much bigger than corresponding tested control software. The first domestic (Soviet) software simulators of external environment, imitating flights of the different types of the aircrafts in external environment, were created in 1960s for testing the country's antiaircraft defense systems.

The control systems in life cycle of the spacecrafts' onboard complexes of the control programs as well as the aircrafts' flight control systems and the dispatchers' control systems in air traffic control centers can be considered as examples of external environment models to check if they meet the feature and characteristic requirements of the complexes of control programs. The simulation of real-time changes of all information coming from the external environment must be provided for complex debugging and testing of the software of such control systems. The sources of information for the ATC centers' modeling test desks were radar stations, air crews on board, flying control officers. As a result, the necessity of dynamic simulation of several heterogeneous objects interaction, taking into account their influence on the control object, has emerged.

Based on the author's experience in creation of dynamic external environment models for testing of the complexes of the target system control programs, the article presents: the approach to such environment models requirements development; the components which generate dynamic models of the environment; features of custom software testing in interaction with external environment models.

Keywords: custom software, external environment of manager programs, dynamic objects of external environment, external environment models, external environment objects testing

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