%P 397-408
%L discovery1456659
%T Angels and monsters: An empirical investigation of potential test effectiveness and efficiency improvement from strongly subsuming higher order mutation
%D 2014
%O This version is the author accepted manuscript. For information on re-use, please refer to the publisher’s terms and conditions.
%S IEEE/ACM International Conference on Automated Software Engineering
%A M Harman
%A Y Jia
%A PR Mateo
%A M Polo
%V 29
%J ASE 2014 - Proceedings of the 29th ACM/IEEE International Conference on Automated Software Engineering
%X We study the simultaneous test effectiveness and efficiency improvement achievable by Strongly Subsuming Higher Order Mutants (SSHOMs), constructed from 15,792 first order mutants in four Java programs. Using SSHOMs in place of the first order mutants they subsume yielded a 35%-45% reduction in the number of mutants required, while simultaneously improving test efficiency by 15% and effectiveness by between 5.6% and 12%. Trivial first order faults often combine to form exceptionally non-trivial higher order faults; apparently innocuous angels can combine to breed monsters. Nevertheless, these same monsters can be recruited to improve automated test effectiveness and efficiency.
%E I Crnkovic
%E M Chechik
%E P Grünbacher
%B ASE '14: Proceedings of the 29th ACM/IEEE International Conference on Automated Software Engineering
%C New York, USA
%I ACM