UTP11 — Complex Data

UTP 1.0 provides little support specification of large datasets that are of complex structure. Such data set are typical in test cases for information systems that process complex business objects (e.g. contracts). Furthermore the concepts "DataPool", "DataPartition", and "DataSelector" are based on a programmer's procedural paradigm and are currently not specified proper stereotypes.

The current data package must doubtlessly be thoroughly revised. However, data partitions are quite useful to express equivalence classes for a given base type (currently done with generalizations, but this does not scale). The issue rather points to the inflexible extension or specification capabilities of instance specifications in the UML. Currently, instance specifications cannot participate in a generalization dependency, preventing reusage of partially defines instance specification in order to avoid redundancy. This seems to be an issue for UML, however, since instance specification are more vital for testing pruposes than for architecture design purposes, UTP should address a refinement mechanism for instance specification in the next minor revisions.
Necessary concepts:
Extension of already defined instance specification
Refinement of slots
Overriding of slots
These concepts have been introduced into UTP by the resolution of issue #16878
Disposition: See issue 16878 for disposition