A Systematic Literature Review on Environment Modeling Techniques in Model-Based Testing

In this paper, we present a systematic literature review (SLR) on the use of envi- ronment models in model-based testing (MBT). The objectives of this paper are to identify what are the main characteristics of environment models, to which type of systems and in which application domains they have been applied, as well as what are the benefits and research challenges when using them for testing and test generation. The SLR is performed for publications retrieved from well-known academic publication databases in order to answer a set of research questions. Sixty one publications have been identified and selected as primary studies on which we performed our analysis. The results show that the environment models are especially useful in testing systems with high complexity and nondeterministic behavior, and that they facilitate automatic test generation. However, building environment models is not always easy due to the lack of automation and tool support.