Testing bidirectional model transformation using metamorphic testing

摘要

Context<br/>In model-based software development, bidirectional model transformation (BX) provides a fundamental solution to model synchronization that can retain the consistency among models. Similar to conventional programs, a BX program may also contain bugs. Accordingly, a BX program must be tested prior to being used in practice. A challenging problem of testing BX programs is to construct test oracles (e.g., assertions and expected output models), which are usually difficult and/or expensive to manually specify.<br/>Objective<br/>In we paper, we investigate how to alleviate the oracle problem in BX testing via reducing the costs of developing test oracles.<br/>Method<br/>We propose a metamorphic testing approach for BX. First, we identify three generic metamorphic relations for BX. Afterwards, we define a metamodel MT4MT to establish metamorphic test groups and test scripts. We also propose a testing framework to support metamorphic testing based on MT4MT.<br/>Results<br/>We conducted an experimental study of mutation analysis and a case study on three ATL-based ad-hoc BXs. The results of the experimental study and the case study showed that our approach killed 79.38% mutants and enabled us to test real-world ATL-based ad-hoc BXs. We also demonstrated that MT4MT can be used to test the semantics properties of BXs.<br/>Conclusion<br/>Our approach is an effective and practical approach with lower costs of developing test oracles.

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