New Visions on Metamorphic Testing after a Quarter of a Century of Inception 1 Tsong Yueh Chen 2 and T.H. Tse 3 [author-izer free download from ACM digital library]

ABSTRACT

Metamorphic testing (MT) was introduced about a quarter of a century ago. It is increasingly being accepted by researchers and the industry as a useful testing technique. The studies, research results, applications, and extensions of MT have given us many insights and visions for its future. Our visions include: MRs will be a practical means to top up test case generation techniques, beyond the alleviation of the test oracle problem; MT will not only be a standalone technique, but conveniently integrated with other methods; MT and MRs will evolve beyond software testing, or even beyond verification; MRs may be anything that you can imagine, beyond the necessary properties of algorithms; MT research will be beyond empirical studies and move toward a theoretical foundation; MT will not only bring new concepts to software testing but also new concepts to other disciplines; MRs will alleviate the reliable test set problem beyond traditional approaches. These visions may help researchers explore the challenges and opportunities for MT in the next decade. Keywords: Metamorphic testing, Metamorphic relation, Testing, Test oracle, Reliable test set, Proving, Debugging

1. T.Y. Chen would like to thank David Rosenblum for his encouragement and confidence in metamorphic testing since the early days of inception. This project is supported by a grant from Facebook and a grant from the Australian Research Council (project no. DP210102447). 2. (Corresponding author.) Department of Computer Science and Software Engineering, Swinburne University of Technology, Hawthorn, VIC 3122, Australia. Email: 3. Department of Computer Science, The University of Hong Kong, Pokfulam, Hong Kong.

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