OCL-Based Test Case Generation Using Category Partitioning Method

The adoption of fault detection techniques during initial stages of software development life cycle urges to improve reliability of a software product. Specification-based testing is one of the major criterions to detect faults in the requirement specification or design of a software system. However, due to the non-availability of implementation details, test case generation from formal specifications become a challenging task. As a novel approach, the proposed work presents a methodology to generate test cases from OCL (Object constraint Language) formal specification using Category Partitioning Method (CPM). The experiment results indicate that the proposed methodology is more effective in revealing specification based faults. Furthermore, it has been observed that OCL and CPM form an excellent combination for performing functional testing at the earliest to improve software quality with reduced cost.