A Mutation-Based Approach for Testing AsmetaL Specifications

The detection of specification errors can help reduce the cost and risk of software development because uncorrected defects in specifications will propagate to code, thus adversely affecting the quality of the end product. Mutation testing is a well-established fault-based technique for assessing and improving the quality of test suites. Mutation testing can be applied at different levels of abstraction, e.g., the unit level, the integration level, and the specification level. In this paper, we propose a suite of AsmetaL-specific mutation operators, classified into four categories. The proposed operators are used to assess the adequacy of test suites generated using the ATGT tool, according to various test coverage criteria. We demonstrate the applicability of our approach through eight publicly available AsmetaL case studies. The results of the case studies show that our proposed mutation operators can be used to compare different AsmetaL-based test coverage criteria and successfully detect inadequacies in test suites.