Better Code by Making Bugs: SWOT Analysis of Mutation Testing

Dr. Mamta Madan
2016 IOSR Journal of Computer Engineering  
In today's world, quality is an important factor for customer satisfaction. Quality assurance and testing are one of the important dimensions. But how can we test? If one does not find a bug, then does that really mean that there aren't any? Have any one wondered, what happens to the guards who are actually guarding us, who is the one who guard the guard's? From this analogy ,question arises how to deliver higher quality software by increasing the efficiency and effectiveness of our testing
more » ... esses. Solution is that we need extensive type of testing to evaluate the quality of test cases how fault resistant are they? And how much code has been covered by them. Mutation testing is the possible solution which is basically based on this. Mutation testing purposely makes fluctuations in a program's code, then re-run a suite of valid unit tests against the mutated program. This paper presents brief description about mutation testing, its process along with the SWOT analysis of mutation testing; it is evaluated on the bases of its strength, weakness, opportunities and threats. This analysis may help in highlighting and addressing issues in order to adopt mutation testing as an efficient testing technique or not and help in answering the questions like: Whether mutation testing is a worth technique for improving our tests? Do mutation testing really tests the test? What can be possible deficiencies found if one uses this technique? Is there anything stored for research community to identify the issues and opportunities in mutation testing.
doi:10.9790/0661-15010020206-11 fatcat:l6b37bay4jbclcq36tw3obmgiy