Fault-based testing of database application programs with conceptual data model

Database application programs typically contain program units that use SQL statements to manipulate records in database instances. Testing the correctness of data manipulation by these programs is challenging. When a tester provides a database instance to test such a program, the program unit may output faulty SQL statements and, hence, manipulate inappropriate database records. Nonetheless, these failures may only be revealed in very specific database instances. This paper proposes to integrate SQL statements and the conceptual data models of an application for fault-based testing. It proposes a set of mutation operators based on the standard types of constraint used in the enhanced entity-relationship model. These operators are semantic in nature. This semantic information guides the construction of affected attributes and join conditions of mutants. The usefulness of our proposal is illustrated by an example in which a missing-record fault is revealed.