Mutation Operators for Specifications








Testing has a vital support role 
in the software engineering process, but developing 
tests often takes significant resources. A formal 
specification is a repository of knowledge about 
a system, and a <A HREF="http://hissa.nist.gov/~black/FTG/autotest.html">recent method</A> 
uses such specifications to automatically generate complete 
test suites via mutation analysis. We define 
an extensive set of mutation operators for 
use with this method. We report the 
results of our theoretical and experimental investigation 
of the relationships between the classes of 
faults detected by the various operators. Finally, 
we recommend sets of mutations which yield 
good test coverage at a reduced cost.