Mutation testing: Guideline and mutation operator classification

Resumen

Mutation testing has been found to be effective to assess test suites quality and also to generate new test cases. In fact, it has been applied to many languages. Unfortunately there is no research work which focuses its attention on detect deficiencies in the mutation testing studies already done. Moreover, the mutation operators classification has not been tackled at all. When has a mutation testing study an enough grade of maturity? It has not been found an study which determines the grade of maturity of a mutation testing study. We propose a classification of mutation operators which lets us know if it is necessary to define more mutation operators, and also lets us determine if the mutation operators are good enough to consider mature the mutation testing study. The evaluation results show the benefits of the proposed classification. This classification lets the developer do a good evaluation of the programming language under mutation testing, as well as its defined mutation operators. The mutation testing process described in this paper and the mutation operators classification have been developed and analyzed with real cases. New mutation operators for Event Processing Language have been defined and used as examples to understand the proposed mutation operators classification.