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Software Vaccination: An Artificial Immune System Approach to Mutation Testing

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Artificial Immune Systems (ICARIS 2003)

Part of the book series: Lecture Notes in Computer Science ((LNCS,volume 2787))

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Abstract

Over time programming languages develop, paradigmsevolve, development teams change. The effect of this is that test suites wear out, therefore these also need to evolve. Mutation testing is an effective fault-based testing approach, but it is computationally expensive. Any evolutionary based approach to this process needs to simultaneously manage execution costs. In this conceptual paper we adopt immune systems as a metaphor for the basis of an alternative mutation testing system. It is envisaged that through monitoring of the development environment, a minimal set of effective mutations and test cases can be developed – a ‘vaccine’ – that can be applied to the software development process to protect it from errors – from infections.

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© 2003 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg

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May, P., Mander, K., Timmis, J. (2003). Software Vaccination: An Artificial Immune System Approach to Mutation Testing. In: Timmis, J., Bentley, P.J., Hart, E. (eds) Artificial Immune Systems. ICARIS 2003. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol 2787. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-540-45192-1_8

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-540-45192-1_8

  • Publisher Name: Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-540-40766-9

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-540-45192-1

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