Application of Property-based Testing Tools for Metamorphic Testing

Nasser Alzahrani, Maria Spichkova, James Harland

2022

Abstract

Metamorphic testing (MT) is a general approach for the testing of a specific kind of software systems – so-called “non-testable”, where the “classical” testing approaches are difficult to apply. MT is an effective approach for addressing the test oracle problem and test case generation problem. The test oracle problem is when it is difficult to determine the correct expected output of a particular test case or to determine whether the actual outputs agree with the expected outcomes. The core concept in MT is metamorphic relations (MRs) which provide formal specification of the system under test. One of the challenges in MT is effective test generation. Property-based testing (PBT) is a testing methodology in which test cases are generated according to desired properties of the software. In some sense, MT can be seen as a very specific kind of PBT. In this paper, we show how to use PBT tools to automate test generation and verification of MT. In addition to automation benefit, the proposed method shows how to combine general PBT with MT under the same testing framework.

Paper Citation

in Harvard Style

Alzahrani N., Spichkova M. and Harland J. (2022). Application of Property-based Testing Tools for Metamorphic Testing. In Proceedings of the 17th International Conference on Evaluation of Novel Approaches to Software Engineering - Volume 1: ENASE, ISBN 978-989-758-568-5, pages 553-560. DOI: 10.5220/0011101700003176

in Bibtex Style

@conference{enase22,
author={Nasser Alzahrani and Maria Spichkova and James Harland},
title={Application of Property-based Testing Tools for Metamorphic Testing},
booktitle={Proceedings of the 17th International Conference on Evaluation of Novel Approaches to Software Engineering - Volume 1: ENASE,},
year={2022},
pages={553-560},
publisher={SciTePress},
organization={INSTICC},
doi={10.5220/0011101700003176},
isbn={978-989-758-568-5},
}

in EndNote Style

TY - CONF

JO - Proceedings of the 17th International Conference on Evaluation of Novel Approaches to Software Engineering - Volume 1: ENASE,
TI - Application of Property-based Testing Tools for Metamorphic Testing
SN - 978-989-758-568-5
AU - Alzahrani N.
AU - Spichkova M.
AU - Harland J.
PY - 2022
SP - 553
EP - 560
DO - 10.5220/0011101700003176