MUTATION 2018
The 13th International Workshop on Mutation Analysis
Västerås, Sweden, April 9, 2018 - Co-located with ICST
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About Mutation 2018

Mutation is widely acknowledged as one of the most important techniques to assess the quality of tests. In recent years, mutation has gained popularity both in academia and research, with several companies and research projects attempting to incorporate mutation to the development life cycle. Mutation analysis has traditionally targeted the source code but has also been successfully applied to various artefacts at different levels of abstraction. Examples of such artefacts include: database schemas, finite state machines, various model notations, security policies, software product lines, etc. Mutation has also been employed to solve various research problems including the Test Oracle Problem, Fault Localisation and Debugging, Defect Prediction, etc. To this day, the mutation field continues to expand with an increasing trend of high quality publications.

Mutation 2018 is the 13th in the series of international workshops focusing on mutation analysis. The workshop will be held in conjunction with the 11th International Conference on Software Testing, Verification, and Validation (ICST 2018). Accepted papers will be published as part of the ICST proceedings.

The Mutation workshop aims to be the premier forum for practitioners and researchers to discuss recent advances in the area and propose new research directions. We invite submissions of both full-length and short-length research papers and especially encourage the submission of industry practice papers.


Call for Papers

Call for Papers

Mutation is widely acknowledged as one of the most important techniques to assess the quality of tests. In recent years, mutation has gained popularity both in academia and research, with several companies and research projects attempting to incorporate mutation to the development life cycle. Mutation analysis has traditionally targeted the source code but has also been successfully applied to various artefacts at different levels of abstraction. Examples of such artefacts include: database schemas, finite state machines, various model notations, security policies, software product lines, etc. Mutation has also been employed to solve various research problems including the Test Oracle Problem, Fault Localisation and Debugging, Defect Prediction, etc. To this day, the mutation field continues to expand with an increasing trend of high quality publications. The Mutation workshop aims to be the premier forum for practitioners and researchers to discuss recent advances in the area and propose new research directions. We invite submissions of both full-length and short-length research papers and especially encourage the submission of industry practice papers.

Topics of Interest

Topics include, but are not limited to:

  • Mutation-based test adequacy criteria (theoretical analyses and practical applications).
  • Mutation-based test data generation.
  • Higher order mutation testing.
  • Novel mutation testing paradigms and applications.
  • Novel solutions to mutation's problems.
  • Empirical studies using and/or evaluating mutation.
  • Theoretical analysis of mutation testing.
  • Mutation testing tools.
  • Industrial experience and application of mutation testing.
  • Mutation for mobile, internet, and cloud-based systems (QoS, power consumption, etc).
  • Mutation for non-functional properties, including security, reliability, performance, etc.

Types of Submissions

Three types of papers can be submitted to the workshop:

  • Full papers (10 pages): Research, case studies.
  • Short papers (6 pages): Research in progress, tools, experience reports, new ideas.
  • Industrial papers (6 pages): Applications and lessons learned in industry.

Each paper must conform to the two columns IEEE conference publication format and must be submitted in PDF format via EasyChair. Submissions will be evaluated according to the relevance and originality of the work and to their ability to generate discussions between the participants of the workshop. Three reviewers will review each paper and all the accepted papers will be published as part of the ICST proceedings.

Important Dates

  • Submission of abstracts: January 5, 2018 January 12, 2018
  • Submission of full papers: January 12, 2018 January 19, 2018
  • Notification of acceptance: February 19, 2018
  • Camera Ready: February 28, 2018
  • Workshop date: April 9, 2018

Submission Site

Submissions will be handled via EasyChair: https://easychair.org/conferences/?conf=mutation2018.

Special Issue on Mutation Testing

Following the workshop, authors of selected papers will be invited to submit extended versions of their papers to a Special Issue on mutation testing (Pending approval by Journal editors).

Downloads: CfPpdf   CfPtxt

Organisation

Organisation

Program Chairs

Marinos Kintis
University of Luxembourg
Nan Li
Medidata Solutions
José Miguel Rojas
University of Leicester

Program Committee

Paul Ammann
George Mason Unversity (USA)
Lin Deng
Towson University (USA)
Vinicius Durelli
University of São Paulo (Brazil)
Gordon Fraser
Universität Passau (Germany)
Sudipto Ghosh
Colorado State University (USA)
Milos Gligoric
The University of Texas at Austin (USA)
Rahul Gopinath
Saarland University ( Germany)
Yue Jia
University College London and Facebook (UK)
Rene Just
University of Massachusetts Amherst (USA)
Gregory Kapfhammer
Allegheny College (USA)
Marinos Kintis
University of Luxembourg (SnT) (Luxembourg)
Jens Krinke
University College London (UK)
Yves Le Traon
University of Luxembourg (Luxembourg)
Nan Li
Medidata Solutions (USA)
Birgitta Lindström
University of Skövde (Sweden)
Lech Madeyski
Wroclaw University of Technology (Poland)
Nicos Malevris
Athens University of Economics and Business (Greece)
Mike Papadakis
University of Luxembourg (Luxembourg)
Goran Petrovic
Google Switzerland GmbH (Switzerland)
José Miguel Rojas
University of Leicester (UK)
Sina Shamshiri
The University of Sheffield (UK)
Jie Zhang
Peking University (China)

Keynotes

Goran Petrovic

Software Engineer
Google Switzerland GmbH (Switzerland)

John Clark

Professor of Computer and Information Security
The University of Sheffield (UK)

Program

08:00.

Registration.


09:00.

Opening.


09:15.

Keynote 1: MUTATION: What Have We Done and What Can We Do Next?.


Prof. John Clark.

10:30.

Fika.


11:00.

Session 1.


11:00.

A Systematic Review of Cost Reduction Techniques for Mutation Testing: Preliminary Results.


Fabiano Cutigi Ferrari, Alessandro Viola Pizzoleto and Jeff Offutt.

11:30.

To Detect Abnormal Program Behaviours via Mutation Deduction.


Jie Zhang, Dan Hao, Lingming Zhang and Lu Zhang.

11:50.

If You Can't Kill a Supermutant, You Have a Problem.


Rahul Gopinath, Björn Mathis and Andreas Zeller.

12:10.

Mull it over: mutation testing based on LLVM.


Alex Denisov and Stanislav Pankevich.

12:30.

Lunch.


14:00.

Keynote 2: Mutation Testing: Evaluating Millions of Mutants in 8 Programming Languages.


Goran Petrovic.

15:30.

Fika.


16:00.

Session 2.


16:00.

Mutant Quality Indicators.


Mike Papadakis, Thierry Titcheu Chekam and Yves Le Traon.

16:20.

MUSIC: MUtation analySIs tool with High Configurability and Extensibility.


Duy Loc Phan, Yunho Kim and Moonzoo Kim.

16:40.

An Industrial Application of Mutation Testing: Lessons, Challenges, and Research Directions.


Goran Petrović, Marko Ivanković, Robert Kurtz, Paul Ammann and René Just.

17:00.

Closing.


Registration

Please use the general ICST'18 registration site. Early bird registration available until March 9th, 2018.