research-article

MR-Scout: Automated Synthesis of Metamorphic Relations from Existing Test Cases

Authors:

Valerio Terragni,

Shing-Chi CheungAuthors Info & Claims

ACM Transactions on Software Engineering and Methodology, Volume 33, Issue 6

Article No.: 150, Pages 1 - 28

https://doi.org/10.1145/3656340

Published: 29 June 2024 Publication History

Abstract

Metamorphic Testing (MT) alleviates the oracle problem by defining oracles based on metamorphic relations (MRs) that govern multiple related inputs and their outputs. However, designing MRs is challenging, as it requires domain-specific knowledge. This hinders the widespread adoption of MT. We observe that developer-written test cases can embed domain knowledge that encodes MRs. Such encoded MRs could be synthesized for testing not only their original programs but also other programs that share similar functionalities.

In this article, we propose MR-Scout to automatically synthesize MRs from test cases in open-source software (OSS) projects. MR-Scout first discovers MR-encoded test cases (MTCs), and then synthesizes the encoded MRs into parameterized methods (called codified MRs), and filters out MRs that demonstrate poor quality for new test case generation. MR-Scout discovered over 11,000 MTCs from 701 OSS projects. Experimental results show that over 97% of codified MRs are of high quality for automated test case generation, demonstrating the practical applicability of MR-Scout. Furthermore, codified-MRs-based tests effectively enhance the test adequacy of programs with developer-written tests, leading to 13.52% and 9.42% increases in line coverage and mutation score, respectively. Our qualitative study shows that 55.76% to 76.92% of codified MRs are easily comprehensible for developers.

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Cited By

Xu CChen SWu JCheung STerragni VZhu HCao JFilkov VRay BZhou M(2024)MR-Adopt: Automatic Deduction of Input Transformation Function for Metamorphic TestingProceedings of the 39th IEEE/ACM International Conference on Automated Software Engineering10.1145/3691620.3696020(557-569)Online publication date: 27-Oct-2024
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3691620.3696020
Tiwari DGamage YMonperrus MBaudry B(2024)PROZE: Generating Parameterized Unit Tests Informed by Runtime Data2024 IEEE International Conference on Source Code Analysis and Manipulation (SCAM)10.1109/SCAM63643.2024.00025(166-176)Online publication date: 7-Oct-2024
https://doi.org/10.1109/SCAM63643.2024.00025
Molina FGorla Ad’Amorim M(undefined)Test Oracle Automation in the Era of LLMsACM Transactions on Software Engineering and Methodology10.1145/3715107
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3715107

Index Terms

MR-Scout: Automated Synthesis of Metamorphic Relations from Existing Test Cases
1. Software and its engineering
  1. Software creation and management
    1. Software verification and validation
      1. Software defect analysis
        Software testing and debugging

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cover image ACM Transactions on Software Engineering and Methodology

ACM Transactions on Software Engineering and Methodology Volume 33, Issue 6

July 2024

951 pages

EISSN:1557-7392

DOI:10.1145/3613693

Editor:
Mauro Pezzé
USI Universitá della Svizzera italiana and SIT Schaffhausen Institute of Technology, Switzerland

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Publication History

Published: 29 June 2024

Online AM: 09 April 2024

Accepted: 20 March 2024

Revised: 05 January 2024

Received: 23 August 2023

Published in TOSEM Volume 33, Issue 6

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Cited By

Xu CChen SWu JCheung STerragni VZhu HCao JFilkov VRay BZhou M(2024)MR-Adopt: Automatic Deduction of Input Transformation Function for Metamorphic TestingProceedings of the 39th IEEE/ACM International Conference on Automated Software Engineering10.1145/3691620.3696020(557-569)Online publication date: 27-Oct-2024
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3691620.3696020
Tiwari DGamage YMonperrus MBaudry B(2024)PROZE: Generating Parameterized Unit Tests Informed by Runtime Data2024 IEEE International Conference on Source Code Analysis and Manipulation (SCAM)10.1109/SCAM63643.2024.00025(166-176)Online publication date: 7-Oct-2024
https://doi.org/10.1109/SCAM63643.2024.00025
Molina FGorla Ad’Amorim M(undefined)Test Oracle Automation in the Era of LLMsACM Transactions on Software Engineering and Methodology10.1145/3715107
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3715107

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