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Seed Model Synthesis for Testing Model-Based Mutation Operators

Abstract:

In software engineering, mutation consists in injecting small changes in artefacts – like models, programs, or data – for purposes like (mutation) testing, test data generation, and all sorts of search-based methods. These activities normally require the definition of sets of mutation operators, which are often built ad-hoc because there is currently poor support for their development and testing. To improve this situation, in previous work we proposed a model-based approach to create and execute mutation operators. Our proposal represents the artefacts to be mutated as models and provides a domain-specific language called Wodel to define the mutation operators. However, testing the operators is cumbersome, since it requires the manual creation of input seed models. To facilitate this testing process, we propose a method – based on model finding – for the automated synthesis of test models that exercise the defined mutation operators. We provide tool support for our proposal, and illustrate its usage by defining mutation operators for BPMN.