Generating a test oracle from program documentation

Abstract

A fundamental assumption of software testing is that there is some mechanism, an oracle, that will determine whether or not the results of a test execution are correct. In practice this is often done by comparing the output, either automatically or manually, to some pre-calculated, presumably correct, output [17]. However, if the program is formally documented it is possible to use the specification to determine the success or failure of a test execution, as in [1], for example. This paper discusses ongoing work to produce a tool that will generate a test oracle from formal program documentation.