Musaca: mutation testing at system and multi-class levels

• Autores: Pedro Reales Mateo
• Directores de la Tesis: Macario Polo Usaola (dir. tes.)
• Lectura: En la Universidad de Castilla-La Mancha ( España ) en 2013
• Idioma: español
• Tribunal Calificador de la Tesis: Jeff Offutt (presid.) , Mario G. Piattini Velthuis (secret.) , Giuseppe Visaggio (voc.)
• Enlaces
  • Tesis en acceso abierto en: TESEO
• Resumen

  • RESUMEN Testing is one of the most important tasks in the software development to ensure the quality of the systems. There are many testing techniques with a higher or lower degree of effectiveness. Mutation testing is one of the most effective testing techniques. In mutation testing, the tester has to design test cases to find artificial errors previously introduced in copies of the system. Given its high degree of effectiveness, this technique has traditionally been used to evaluate other testing techniques. However, mutation testing is not widely used due to its high costs.

    Besides, until now, mutation testing has only been applied at unit, integration and class levels. In the last years, mutation testing has gained maturity enough to be applied in an industry context. However, in order to test complete systems with multiple classes, new techniques that allow testers to apply mutation at higher levels of abstraction are required (i.e. system and multi-class levels).

    Therefore, the goal of this thesis is to design a technology that supports mutation testing at system and multi-class levels. The technology here proposed is a complete framework called MuSaCa, which is made up of three modules.

    Since the previous mutation techniques had a lot of problems when used at system level, the first module consists of techniques supporting mutation testing at system level. The second module is made up of a set of cost reduction techniques that can be used at system levels. These techniques are critical since mutation testing is very costly. And the third module consists of a mutation tool that implements the techniques of the other modules.

    The results obtained in this thesis demonstrate that, using the MuSaCa framework, not only mutation testing can be used at system level, but also it can be used at system level within reasonable costs.