An Automated Approach for Goal-driven, Specification-based Testing

This paper presents a specification-based approach that addresses several known challenges including false positives and domain knowledge errors. Our approach begins with a goal graph and plans. Source code is annotated with goals and events and precompiled to emit those at run time. Plans are automatically translated into a rule-based recognizer. An oracle is produced from the pre- and postconditions associated with the plan's goals. When the program is executed, goals and events are emitted and automatically tested against plans and oracles. The concept is demonstrated on a small example and a larger publicly available case study