Patterns for Constructing Mutation Operators: Limiting the Search Space in a Software Engineering Application

We apply methods of genetic programming to a general problem from software engineering, namely example-based generation of specifications. In particular, we focus on model transformation by example. The definition and implementation of model transformations is a task frequently carried out by domain experts, hence, a (semi-)automatic approach is desirable. This application is challenging because the underlying search space has rich semantics, is high-dimensional, and unstructured. Hence, a computationally brute-force approach would be unscalable and potentially infeasible. To address that problem, we develop a sophisticated approach of designing complex mutation operators. We define ‘patterns’ for constructing mutation operators and report a successful case study. Furthermore, the code of the evolved model transformation is required to have high maintainability and extensibility, that is, the code should be easily readable by domain experts. We report an evaluation of this approach in a software engineering case study.