A tool for domain-independent model mutation

Mutation is a systematic technique to create variants of a seed artefact by means of mutation operators. It has many applications in computer science, like software testing, automatic exercise generation and design space exploration. Typically, mutation frameworks are developed ad-hoc by implementing mutation operators and their application strategies from scratch, using general-purpose programming languages. However, this is costly and error-prone. To improve this situation, we propose WODEL: a domain-specific language and tool for model-based mutation that is independent of the domain meta-model. WoDELenables the rapid development and application of model mutations. It provides built-in advanced functionalities like automatic generation of seed models, and static and dynamic metrics of operator coverage and applicability. It offers extension points, e.g., to post-process mutants and describe domain-specific equivalence criteria. As an example, we illustrate the usage of WODEL for the mutation of security policies, and present an empirical evaluation of its expressiveness. (C) 2018 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.