Abstract
Most multi-agent system (MAS) testing techniques lack empirical evidence of their effectiveness. Since finding tests that can reveal a large proportion of possible faults is a key goal in testing, we need techniques to assess the fault detection ability of test sets for MAS. Mutation testing offers a direct and powerful way to do this: it generates modified versions of the program (“mutants”) following a set of rules (“mutation operators”) then checks if a test set can distinguish the original program from the (functionally non-equivalent) mutants. In this paper, we propose a set of mutation operators for the agent-oriented programming language Jason, and then introduce a mutation testing system for individual Jason agents that implements a subset of our proposed mutation operators. We use this subset to assess a test set for a Jason agent that meets a combination of existing agent-based coverage criteria. The assessment shows that this test set is not adequate to kill all mutants.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Preview
Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.
References
Low, C.K., Chen, T.Y., Rönnquist, R.: Automated test case generation for BDI agents. Autonomous Agents and Multi-Agent Systems 2, 311–332 (1999)
Zhang, Z., Thangarajah, J., Padgham, L.: Automated unit testing for agent systems. In: 2nd International Working Conference on Evaluation of Novel Approaches to Software Engineering (ENASE 2007), pp. 10–18 (2007)
Miller, T., Padgham, L., Thangarajah, J.: Test coverage criteria for agent interaction testing. In: Weyns, D., Gleizes, M.P. (eds.) Proceedings of the 11th International Workshop on Agent Oriented Software Engineering, pp. 1–12 (2010)
Nguyen, C.D., Perini, A., Tonella, P.: Automated continuous testing of multi-agent systems. In: The Fifth European Workshop on Multi-Agent Systems (2007)
Adra, S.F., McMinn, P.: Mutation operators for agent-based models. In: Proceedings of 5th International Workshop on Mutation Analysis. IEEE Computer Society (2010)
Saifan, A.A., Wahsheh, H.A.: Mutation operators for JADE mobile agent systems. In: Proceedings of the 3rd International Conference on Information and Communication Systems, ICICS (2012)
Savarimuthu, S., Winikoff, M.: Mutation operators for cognitive agent programs. In: Proceedings of the 2013 International Conference on Autonomous Agents and Multi-Agent Systems (AAMAS 2013), pp. 1137–1138 (2013)
Savarimuthu, S., Winikoff, M.: Mutation Operators for the GOAL Agent Language. In: Winikoff, M., El Fallah Seghrouchni, A., Winikoff, M. (eds.) EMAS 2013. LNCS (LNAI), vol. 8245, pp. 255–273. Springer, Heidelberg (2013)
Houhamdi, Z.: Multi-agent system testing: A survey. International Journal of Advanced Computer Science and Applications (IJACSA) 2(6), 135–141 (2011)
Nguyen, C.D., Perini, A., Bernon, C., Pavón, J., Thangarajah, J.: Testing in multi-agent systems. In: Gleizes, M.-P., Gomez-Sanz, J.J. (eds.) AOSE 2009. LNCS, vol. 6038, pp. 180–190. Springer, Heidelberg (2011)
Ammann, P., Offutt, J.: Introduction to Software Testing. Cambridge University Press (2008)
Mathur, A.P.: Foundations of Software Testing. Pearson (2008)
Andrews, J.H., Briand, L.C., Labiche, Y.: Is mutation an appropriate tool for testing experiments? In: International Conference on Software Engineering (2005)
Bordini, R.H., Hübner, J.F., Wooldridge, M.: Programming Multi-Agent Systems in AgentSpeak using Jason. John Wiley & Sons (2007)
Wooldridge, M.: An Introduction to MultiAgent Systems, 2nd edn. John Wiley & Sons (2009)
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2014 Springer International Publishing Switzerland
About this paper
Cite this paper
Huang, Z., Alexander, R., Clark, J. (2014). Mutation Testing for Jason Agents. In: Dalpiaz, F., Dix, J., van Riemsdijk, M.B. (eds) Engineering Multi-Agent Systems. EMAS 2014. Lecture Notes in Computer Science(), vol 8758. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-14484-9_16
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-14484-9_16
Publisher Name: Springer, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-319-14483-2
Online ISBN: 978-3-319-14484-9
eBook Packages: Computer ScienceComputer Science (R0)