David Saff, Marat Boshernitsan, Michael D. Ernst. Theories in Practice: Easy-to-Write Specifications that
Catch Bugs. Technical Report MIT-CSAIL-TR-2008-002. MIT CSAIL, Cambridge, MA, Jan 14 2008. [Report]

Abstract:Automated testing during development helps ensure that software works according to the test suite. Traditional test suites verify a few well-picked scenarios or example inputs. However, such example-based testing does not uncover errors in legal inputs that the test writer overlooked. We propose theory-based testing as an adjunct to example-based testing. A theory generalizes a (possibly infinite) set of example-based tests. A theory is an assertion that should be true for any data, and it can be exercised by human-chosen data
or by automatic data generation. A theory is expressed in an ordinary programming language, it is easy for developers to use (often even easier than example-based testing), and it serves as a lightweight form of specification. Six case studies demonstrate the utility of theories that generalize existing tests to prevent bugs, clarify intentions, and reveal design problems.