Metamorphic Testing and Its Applications

An “oracle” in software testing is a procedure by which testers can decide whether the output of the program under testing is correct. In some situations, however, the oracle is no t available or too difficult to apply. This is known as the “oracle problem”. In other situations, the oracle is often the human tester who checks the testing result manually. The manual prediction and verification of program output greatl y decreases the efficiency and increases the cost of testing. A metamorphic testing method has been proposed to test programs without the involvement of an oracle. It employs properties of the target function, known as metamorphic relations, to generate follow-up test cases and verify the outputs auto∗ c 2004 Software Engineering Association, Japan. This material is presented to ensure timely dissemination of scholarly and technical work. Personal use of this material is permitted. Copyright and all r ights therein are retained by authors or by other copyright holders. All persons copying this information are expected to adhere to the terms and constraints invoked by each author’s copyright. In most cases, these works ma y not be reposted without the explicit permission of the copyright holder. Permission to reprint/republish this material for advertising or promot ional purposes or for creating new collective works for resale or redistribut ion to servers or lists, or to reuse anyrcopyrighted component of this work in other works must be obtained from the Software Engineers Association, Japan. † This research is supported in part by a discovery grant of the Aus