Using Test Oracles and Formal Specifications with Test-Driven Development

This paper illustrates how Test Oracles and Formal Speci ̄cations, with appropriate tool support, can be used with Test-Driven Development (TDD). In TDD, the test code is a formal documentation of the required behavior of the component or system that is being developed, but this documentation is necessarily incomplete and often over-speci ̄c. We describe an alternative approach to TDD that is to develop the speci ̄cation of the required behavior in a formal notation as a part of the TDD process and to generate test oracles from that speci ̄cation. We present the results of using this approach to develop programs used in a project at the Faculty of Engineering and Applied Science at Memorial University.