Last updated on Monday, October 06, 2025
@inproceedings{Demeyer2020isola,
author = {Serge Demeyer and Ali Parsai and Sten Vercammen and
Brent van Bladel and Mehrdad Abdi},
booktitle = {Proceedings {ISOLA 2020} (Leveraging Applications of
Formal Methods, Verification and Validation:
Engineering Principles)},
month = oct,
publisher = {Springer International Publishing},
title = {Formal Verification of Developer Tests: A Research
Agenda Inspired by Mutation Testing},
year = {2020},
abstract = {With the current emphasis on DevOps, automated
software tests become a necessary ingredient for
continuously evolving, high-quality software systems.
This implies that the test code takes a significant
portion of the complete code base --- test to code
ratios ranging from 3:1 to 2:1 are quite common. We
argue that ``testware'' provides interesting
opportunities for formal verification, especially
because the system under test may serve as an oracle
to focus the analysis. As an example we describe five
common problems (mainly from the subfield of mutation
testing) and how formal verification may contribute.
We deduce a research agenda as an open invitation for
fellow researchers to investigate the peculiarities
of formally verifying testware.},
annote = {workshoppaper},
doi = {10.1007/978-3-030-61470-6_2},
}