First steps towards conceptual schema testing

Like any software artifact, conceptual schemas of information systems can be tested. Testing conceptual schemas has some similarities with testing programs, but there are important differences. We present a list of six kinds of tests that can be applied to conceptual schemas. Some of them require complete schemas comprising both the structural and the behavioral parts, but we show that it is useful to test incomplete schema fragments. We introduce CSTL, a language for writing automated tests of executable schemas written in UML/OCL. We sketch the implementation of a test processor to automatically execute CSTL tests as many times as needed, following the style of the modern xUnit testing frameworks.Peer Reviewe