A Framework for the Automatic Correction of Constraint Programs

Constraint programs, such as those written in high-level constraint modelling languages, e.g., OPL (Optimization Programming Language), COMET, ZINC or ESSENCE, are more and more used in business-critical programs. As any other critical programs, they require to be thoroughly tested and corrected to prevent catastrophic loss of money. This paper presents a framework for the automatic correction of constraint programs that takes into account the specificity of the software development process of these programs as well as their typical faults. We implemented this framework in our testing platform CPTEST for OPL programs. Using mutation testing, our experimental results show that well-known constraint programs written in OPL can be automatically corrected using our framework.