Cloud-Based Distributed Mutation Analysis
This addresses the problem of slow mutation testing for software developers, though it is incremental as it builds on existing distributed computing methods.
The paper tackled the computational expense of mutation testing by developing a cloud-based distributed system using MapReduce, which outperformed the state-of-the-art non-distributed tool PiT and identified opportunities for further performance gains.
Mutation Testing is a fault-based software testing technique which is too computationally expensive for industrial use. Cloud-based distributed computing clusters, taking advantage of the MapReduce programming paradigm, represent a method by which the long running time can be reduced. In this paper, we describe an architecture, and a prototype implementation, of such a cloud-based distributed mutation testing system. To evaluate the system, we compared the performance of the prototype, with various cluster sizes, to an existing "state-of-the-art" non-distributed tool, PiT. We also analysed different approaches to work distribution, to determine how to most efficiently divide the mutation analysis task. Our tool outperformed PiT, and analysis of the results showed opportunities for substantial further performance improvement.