TUMS: testing using mutant schemata

Mutation analysis is a way of quantifying the quality of a test set used in unit testing software. Unfortunately, mutation analysis performed using the conventional interpretive method is very slow. A new non-interpretive method, the MSG method, that has the promise of much higher performance was recently advanced. In this paper we describe TUMS, a prototype MSG-based implementation of a mutation analysis system. We also describe several experiments using this prototype that compare the performance of mutation analysis using the MSG method with mutation analysis using the conventional method. Our experiments strongly suggest that using the new MSG method is significantly faster than using the conventional method, with speed-ups as high as an order-of-magnitude observed.