Automated derivation of tests from specifications

Abstract

This paper describes an analysis of the formalization of contracts between components in component-based frameworks. The long term objective is to describe each component of the framework in an accurate and selfstanding manner so that the description can be used a) to design and code them in isolation and b) to enable the derivation of test cases to validate them against the formalized description. As part of this analysis several existing approaches (such as the Gherkin language and the concordion framework) were investigated. Based on the results of this investigation, a custom-made toolset was designed and prototyped. The prototype relies on two different approaches to describe the formalized contract: a) The Unified Modelling Language (UML) used together with the tool Magicdraw and b) a purpose-build Domain Specific Language (DSL) defined on top of the Eclipse framework. A small proof of concept was designed to illustrate the approach and the specifications created using those two approaches were automatically converted into tests and executed.