Mutation Testing Based on OCL Specifications and Aspect Oriented Programming

Mutation based testing has been considered in many experiments as the most efficacious in terms of revealed faults, but also the most expensive, considering the number of executions. Other problem is that the test data are generally derived from the programs and do not ensure the discovering of faults usually revealed with test data generated from the specification, such as missing paths, which are no-implemented functionalities. Nowadays the use of OCL specifications to generate test data and overcome this limitation has gained importance. Some works propose to enforce OCL constraints by using Aspect Oriented Programming (AOP). However, OCL specifications can be incorrect too. Because of this, in this paper, we propose a testing approach for class testing, which is based on mutation of OCL specifications and AOP. It allows the validation of the implemented code according to the specification and by considering specification faults. The main uses of the approach are illustrated through a case study. Experimental results show its applicability.