Quality evaluation of test oracles using mutation

Author(s)

Ana Claudia Maciel

• Document type: Master's Dissertation
• Press: São Carlos.
• Institution: Universidade de São Paulo (USP). Instituto de Ciências Matemáticas e de Computação (ICMC/SB)
• Defense date: 2017-04-19

Examining board members

Márcio Eduardo Delamaro; José Carlos Maldonado; Regina Lúcia de Oliveira Moraes; Valdivino Alexandre Santiago Junior

• Advisor: Márcio Eduardo Delamaro

Abstract

In software development, product quality is directly related to the quality of the development process. Therefore, activities of Verification, Validation & Testing (VV&T) performed by methods, techniques and tools are urgently required to increase productivity, quality and cost reduction in software development. Similarly, testing technique and criteria contribute to the productivity of test activities. A crucial point for the software testing automation is making the most reliable activities and significantly reducing development costs. Regarding software testing automation, test oracles are essential, representing an mechanism (program, process or data) to indicate whether the actual output for a given test case is correct. This masters thesis aims to explore concepts of mutation testing to create alternative implementations of the oracle procedure and thus assess their quality. Mutation testing refers to the creation of system development versions with minor syntactic code changes. It has high efficiency on defects detecting and it is very flexible in its application and it is being used in various types of artifacts. This work also proposes specific mutation operators for oracles, implements an useful support tool for using these oracle mutation operators and conducts an empirical study of operators, highlighting benefits and challenges associated with their use. (AU)

• FAPESP's process: 14/09629-1 - Quality evaluation of test oracles using mutation
• Grantee: Ana Claudia Maciel
• Support Opportunities: Scholarships in Brazil - Master