Partition testing from XML schema

Partition testing refers to a broad class of test criteria that systematically sample a program's input domain, variously implementing the common underlying strategy of: i) looking at a program input variables, ii) identifying relevant classes of input values, and iii) choosing some representative test input values for each identified class. In such a scheme, the degree of automation achievable for test generation clearly depends on the formalization of the input domain description. Nowadays, the XML has established itself as the de facto standard format for specifying and exchanging data, while the XML Schema has spread up as the notation for formally describing what constitutes a valid XML document within an application domain. We propose the XML-based Partition Testing approach, which applies the Category Partition method onto XML Schema, so that functional test cases, expressed in the form of XML instances, are systematically and automatically derived. The architecture of the TAXI tool implementing XPT is also illustrated.