Causal reasoning in Software Quality Assurance: A systematic review

IF 3.8 2区计算机科学 Q2 COMPUTER SCIENCE, INFORMATION SYSTEMS

Information and Software Technology Pub Date : 2024-10-15 DOI:10.1016/j.infsof.2024.107599

Luca Giamattei, Antonio Guerriero, Roberto Pietrantuono, Stefano Russo

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引用次数: 0

Abstract

Context:

Software Quality Assurance (SQA) is a fundamental part of software engineering to ensure stakeholders that software products work as expected after release in operation. Machine Learning (ML) has proven to be able to boost SQA activities and contribute to the development of quality software systems. In this context, Causal Reasoning is gaining increasing interest as a methodology to go beyond a purely data-driven approach by exploiting the use of causality for more effective SQA strategies.

Objective:

Provide a broad and detailed overview of the use of causal reasoning for SQA activities, in order to support researchers to access this research field, identifying room for application, main challenges and research opportunities.

Methods:

A systematic review of the scientific literature on causal reasoning for SQA. The study has found, classified, and analyzed 86 articles, according to established guidelines for software engineering secondary studies.

Results:

Results highlight the primary areas within SQA where causal reasoning has been applied, the predominant methodologies used, and the level of maturity of the proposed solutions. Fault localization is the activity where causal reasoning is more exploited, especially in the web services/microservices domain, but other tasks like testing are rapidly gaining popularity. Both causal inference and causal discovery are exploited, with the Pearl’s graphical formulation of causality being preferred, likely due to its intuitiveness. Tools to favor their application are appearing at a fast pace — most of them after 2021.

Conclusions:

The findings show that causal reasoning is a valuable means for SQA tasks with respect to multiple quality attributes, especially during V&V, evolution and maintenance to ensure reliability, while it is not yet fully exploited for phases like requirements engineering and design. We give a picture of the current landscape, pointing out exciting possibilities for future research.

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软件质量保证中的因果推理：系统回顾

背景：软件质量保证（SQA）是软件工程的一个基本组成部分，旨在确保利益相关者的软件产品在发布投入使用后能够按照预期运行。事实证明，机器学习（ML）能够促进 SQA 活动，并为高质量软件系统的开发做出贡献。在此背景下，因果推理作为一种超越纯粹数据驱动方法的方法论，通过利用因果关系制定更有效的 SQA 战略，正受到越来越多的关注。目标：提供关于因果推理在 SQA 活动中的应用的广泛而详细的概述，以支持研究人员进入这一研究领域，确定应用空间、主要挑战和研究机会。研究根据软件工程二次研究的既定准则，对 86 篇文章进行了查找、分类和分析。结果：结果强调了 SQA 中应用因果推理的主要领域、使用的主要方法以及所提解决方案的成熟度。故障定位是因果推理应用较多的活动，尤其是在网络服务/微服务领域，但测试等其他任务也在迅速普及。因果推理和因果发现都得到了利用，Pearl 的因果关系图形表述更受青睐，这可能是由于其直观性。结论：研究结果表明，因果推理是针对多种质量属性的 SQA 任务的重要手段，尤其是在 V&V、演进和维护过程中，以确保可靠性，而在需求工程和设计等阶段尚未得到充分利用。我们介绍了当前的情况，并指出了未来研究的可能性。

本文章由计算机程序翻译，如有差异，请以英文原文为准。

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来源期刊

Information and Software Technology 工程技术-计算机：软件工程

CiteScore

9.10

自引率

7.70%

发文量

164

审稿时长

9.6 weeks

期刊介绍： Information and Software Technology is the international archival journal focusing on research and experience that contributes to the improvement of software development practices. The journal''s scope includes methods and techniques to better engineer software and manage its development. Articles submitted for review should have a clear component of software engineering or address ways to improve the engineering and management of software development. Areas covered by the journal include: • Software management, quality and metrics, • Software processes, • Software architecture, modelling, specification, design and programming • Functional and non-functional software requirements • Software testing and verification & validation • Empirical studies of all aspects of engineering and managing software development Short Communications is a new section dedicated to short papers addressing new ideas, controversial opinions, "Negative" results and much more. Read the Guide for authors for more information. The journal encourages and welcomes submissions of systematic literature studies (reviews and maps) within the scope of the journal. Information and Software Technology is the premiere outlet for systematic literature studies in software engineering.