Chronological fault-based mutation processes for WS-BPEL 2.0 programs

摘要

Business Process Execution Language for Web Services (WS-BPEL) is a powerful language developed to capture the semantics of business processes and to describe the interactions between involved systems. Limited research has been undertaken in the area of identifying faults manifested in WS-BPEL-based systems. In this paper, we propose an approach to assist in testing WS-BPEL programs, specifically with regard to chronological-oriented faults. This approach employs mutation testing to identify and detect mutants introduced into WS-BPEL programs. We describe the steps to generate such mutants for WS-BPEL programs. To reduce the mutant specification into a minimal set of generic mutant specifications, we work directly with the workflow patterns that exist in this language. Further, we utilise an extended version of Backus-Naur Form (BNF) to represent a simple subset of communicating sequential processes (CSP) notations, adapted to fit the descriptive needs of WS-BPEL-based systems, to provide a complete and minimal set of mutants of chronological-oriented faults that can exist in WS-BPEL systems of the future.