Modeling and Validating Requirements Using Executable Cotnracts and Scenarios

A quality-driven approach to software development and testing demands that, ultimately, the requirements of stakeholders be validated against the actual behavior of an implementation under test (IUT). In Model-Based Testing, much work has been done on the generation of functional test cases. But few approaches tackle the executability of such test cases. And those that do, offer a solution in which tests and test cases are not directly traceable back to the actual behavior of an IUT. Furthermore, very few approaches tackle non-functional requirements. Consequently, we have implemented a validation framework that does support the modeling and automated validation of a set of functional and non-functional requirements against several candidates IUTs. We report here on the key characteristics of this prototype and briefly discuss lessons learnt from its use in the context of a graduate course.