Data refinement based testing

FineFit is a model-driven framework for testing object-oriented systems. A FineFit specification is a collection of HTML tables representing the structure and the operations of the system under test. FineFit translates the specification into a relational model that serves both as a test oracle and as a source of test cases. FineFit uses the retrieve relation—the data refinement definition of the relationship between the abstract and the concrete system states—to check if the actual behavior of a Java program matches its abstract specification. The emphasis on representing and comparing system states makes this approach particularly attractive to object-oriented systems, which often consist of a complex graph of objects that represent the entities of a problem domain and the relationships between them. Thus, FineFit demonstrates the advantages of a data refinement approach to testing.