Black-box software testing requires test cases to be generated from specifications alone. However, it is impossible to automate the process completely for arbitrary specifications. Specifications are thus restricted to being written entirely in terms of relational algebra expressions. An automated test case generation method is developed for such specifications.>

The authors: develop mapping rules from the relational algebra to linear predicates defining relations in the (output) domain; describe how these predicates can be interpreted in the (input) domain using f/sub Q/, a specified query relation; describe a translation from these predicates to sets of systems of linear inequalities; and discuss the use of a set of systems of linear inequalities to generate complete test cases, inputs, and expected outputs from the queries using the domain testing theory. The proposed techniques support software development based on specification testing, specification-directed testing, and rapid prototyping.>