An approach to test-driven development of conceptual schemas

Test-Driven Development (TDD) is an extreme programming development method in which a software system is developed in short iterations. In this paper we present the Test-Driven Conceptual Modeling (TDCM) method, which is an application of TDD for conceptual modeling, and we show how to develop a conceptual schema using it. In TDCM, a system's conceptual schema is incrementally obtained by performing three kinds of tasks: (1) Write a test the system should pass; (2) Change the schema to pass the test; and (3) Refactor the schema to improve its qualities. We also describe an integration approach of TDCM into a broad set of software development methodologies, including the Unified Process development methodology, the MDD-based approaches, the storytest-driven agile methods and the goal and scenario-oriented requirements engineering methods. We deal with schemas written in UML/OCL, but the TDCM method could be adapted to the development of schemas in other languages.