Mutation Operators for Specifications

Published

September 15, 2000

Author(s)

Paul E. Black, Vadim Okun, Yaacov Yesha

Abstract

Testing has a vital support role in the software engineering process, but developing tests often takes significant resources. A formal specification is a repository of knowledge about a system, and a recent method uses such specifications to automatically generate complete test suites via mutation analysis. We define an extensive set of mutation operators for use with this method. We report the results of our theoretical and experimental investigation of the relationships between the classes of faults detected by the various operators. Finally, we recommend sets of mutation operators which yield good test coverage at a reduced cost compared to using all proposed operators.

Proceedings Title

Proceedings of the Fifteenth IEEE International Conference on Automated Software Engineering (ASE 2000)

Conference Dates

September 11-15, 2000

Conference Location

Grenoble,

Conference Title

The Fifteenth IEEE International Conference on Automated Software Engineering (ASE 2000)

Pub Type

Conferences

Download Paper

https://doi.org/10.1109/ASE.2000.873653

Keywords

formal specification, mutation analysis, mutation operators

Citation

Black, P. , Okun, V. and Yesha, Y. (2000), Mutation Operators for Specifications, Proceedings of the Fifteenth IEEE International Conference on Automated Software Engineering (ASE 2000), Grenoble, , [online], https://doi.org/10.1109/ASE.2000.873653 (Accessed October 15, 2025)