An Object-Oriented Testing Framework Specified in Z Notation

Many researches to testing object-oriented programs (OOPs) have been proposed for the past decade. However, most of these researches have centered only around the class-level testing instead of the whole profiles of OOP development. This paper presents a framework to test OOPs from em formal specification to em test data generation. The formal specification of object-oriented program is specified in Z notation which is a mathematically rigorous specification language. A state transition diagram (STD) derived from Z specification provides a complementary representation of the dynamic behavior of a given OOP. In addition, the STD can be used to generate a test data which consists of anticipated operation sequences of OOPs. Moreover, a testing algorithm modeled by em finite state machine is proposed to run against test data. Two important testing criteria, consistency and completeness (C & C), are used to evaluate testing result. The final test result shows that the testing framework is executable and pragmatic.