{"title":"Bogor: A Flexible Framework for Creating Software Model Checkers","authors":"Robby, Matthew B. Dwyer, J. Hatcliff","doi":"10.1109/TAIC-PART.2006.5","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1109/TAIC-PART.2006.5","url":null,"abstract":"Model checking has proven to be an effective technology for verification and debugging in hardware and more recently in software domains. With the proliferation of multi-core architectures and a greater emphasis on distributed computing, model checking is an increasingly important software quality assurance technique that can complement existing testing and inspection methods. We believe that recent trends in both the requirements for software systems and the processes by which systems are developed suggests that domain-specific model checking engines may be more effective than general purpose model checking tools. To overcome limitations of existing tools which tend to be monolithic and non-extensible, we have developed an extensible and customizable model checking framework called Bogor. In this article, we summarize how Bogor provides direct support for modeling object-oriented designs and implementations, how its modeling language and algorithms can be extended and customized to create domain-specific model checking engines, and how Bogor can be deployed in broader software development contexts in conjunction with complementary quality assurance techniques","PeriodicalId":441264,"journal":{"name":"Testing: Academic & Industrial Conference - Practice And Research Techniques (TAIC PART'06)","volume":"128 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2006-08-29","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"117220458","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Improving Testing Efficiency using Cumulative Test Analysis","authors":"Ian Holden, D. Dalton","doi":"10.1109/TAIC-PART.2006.13","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1109/TAIC-PART.2006.13","url":null,"abstract":"It can be impossible to thoroughly test complex software projects with a large library of tests to be run in many environments and configurations. The cumulative test analysis (CTA) technique described reduces the time to find defects by prioritising and minimising the testing. Tests are chosen to target the product areas having the highest risk of defects. Test effectiveness, test code coverage, product code changes and changes to dependencies are monitored and analysed to prioritise the testing. Test results from build to build are accumulated. Build reports clearly identify areas at risk, test results, and the tests that must be run. Experiences with a prototype tool are discussed and conclusions drawn from the use of CTA show that defects are found sooner, more time is available for writing new tests and the focus of test execution moves towards product quality instead of simply test results","PeriodicalId":441264,"journal":{"name":"Testing: Academic & Industrial Conference - Practice And Research Techniques (TAIC PART'06)","volume":"84 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2006-08-29","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"115031476","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Generating a Test Strategy with Bayesian Networks and Common Sense","authors":"J. Gras, Rishabh Gupta, Elena Pérez-Miñana","doi":"10.1109/TAIC-PART.2006.10","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1109/TAIC-PART.2006.10","url":null,"abstract":"Testing still represents an important share of the overall development effort and, coming late in the software life cycle, it is on the critical path both from a schedule and quality perspective. In an effort to conduct smarter software testing, Motorola Labs have developed the Bayesian test assistant (BTA), an advanced decision support tool to optimize all verification and validation activities, in development and system testing. With Bayesian networks, the theory underlying BTA, Motorola Labs built a library of causal models to predict, from key process, people and product factors, the quality of artefacts at each step of the software development. In this paper we present how BTA links the predictions from development models by mapping dependencies between components or subsystems to predict the level of risk in each system feature. As a result, and well before system testing starts, BTA generates a test strategy that optimizes the writing of test cases. During system test, BTA scores test cases to select an optimum set for each test step, leading to a faster discovery of defects. We also describe how BTA was deployed on large telecomm system releases in several Motorola organizations and the improvement driven so far in system testing","PeriodicalId":441264,"journal":{"name":"Testing: Academic & Industrial Conference - Practice And Research Techniques (TAIC PART'06)","volume":"69 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2006-08-29","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"123803104","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Testing a Datawarehouse - An Industrial Challenge","authors":"H. Sneed","doi":"10.1109/TAIC-PART.2006.27","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1109/TAIC-PART.2006.27","url":null,"abstract":"This contribution is an experience report on system testing and in particular on the testing of a datawarehouse system. Datawarehouses are large databases used solely for querying and reporting purposes. The datawarehouse in question here was dedicated to fulfilling the reporting requirements of the BASEL-II agreement on the provision of auditing data by the banks, the European equivalent of the Sarbane-Oxley Act. The purpose of the testing project was to prove that the contents of the datawarehouse are correct in accordance with the rules specified to fill them. In the end, the only way to achieve this was to rewrite the rule specifications in a machine readable form and to transform them into post assertions, which could be interpreted by a data verification tool for comparison of the actual data contents with the expected data contents. The testing project was never fully completed, since not all of the rules could be properly transformed","PeriodicalId":441264,"journal":{"name":"Testing: Academic & Industrial Conference - Practice And Research Techniques (TAIC PART'06)","volume":"17 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2006-08-29","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"114727166","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Mika Katara, Antti Kervinen, Mika Maunumaa, Tuula Pääkkönen, Mikko Satama
{"title":"Towards Deploying Model-Based Testing with a Domain-Specific Modeling Approach","authors":"Mika Katara, Antti Kervinen, Mika Maunumaa, Tuula Pääkkönen, Mikko Satama","doi":"10.1109/TAIC-PART.2006.34","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1109/TAIC-PART.2006.34","url":null,"abstract":"Model-based testing, automating the generation of test cases is technically superior to conventional scripted testing. However, there have been difficulties in deploying the methodology in large scale industrial context. In this paper we present a domain-specific approach to model-based GUI testing that should be easier to adopt than more generic solutions. The method is based on keywords and action words that are considered as best practices in conventional GUI test automation. The basic idea is to record GUI events just like in capture/replay tools, but instead of producing scripts that can be hard to maintain, we produce sequences of keywords. These sequences are further transformed semi-automatically into labeled transition systems where action words are used as transition labels. The action words model user behavior at a high level of abstraction while the keywords correspond to the GUI navigation. We also describe the associated tool set that we are developing and an example of using the approach","PeriodicalId":441264,"journal":{"name":"Testing: Academic & Industrial Conference - Practice And Research Techniques (TAIC PART'06)","volume":"39 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2006-08-29","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"131727063","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"On the Automation of Software Fault Prediction","authors":"T. Ostrand, E. Weyuker","doi":"10.1109/TAIC-PART.2006.19","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1109/TAIC-PART.2006.19","url":null,"abstract":"This paper discusses the issues involved in building a practical automated tool to predict the incidence of software faults in future releases of a large software system. The possibility of creating such a tool is based on the authors' experience in analyzing the fault history of several large industrial software projects, and constructing statistical models that are capable of accurately predicting the most fault-prone software entities in an industrial environment. The emphasis of this paper is on the issues involved in the tool design and construction and an assessment of the extent to which the entire process can be automated so that it can be widely deployed and used by practitioners who do not necessarily have any particular statistical or modeling expertise","PeriodicalId":441264,"journal":{"name":"Testing: Academic & Industrial Conference - Practice And Research Techniques (TAIC PART'06)","volume":"1 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2006-08-29","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"128887589","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
S. Counsell, R. Hierons, R. Najjar, G. Loizou, Y. Hassoun
{"title":"The Effectiveness of Refactoring, Based on a Compatibility Testing Taxonomy and a Dependency Graph","authors":"S. Counsell, R. Hierons, R. Najjar, G. Loizou, Y. Hassoun","doi":"10.1109/TAIC-PART.2006.33","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1109/TAIC-PART.2006.33","url":null,"abstract":"In this paper, we describe and then appraise a testing taxonomy proposed by van Deursen and Moonen (VD&M) based on the post-refactoring repeatability of tests. Four categories of refactoring are identified by VD&M ranging from semantic-preserving to incompatible, where, for the former, no new tests are required and for the latter, a completely new test set has to be developed. In our appraisal of the taxonomy, we heavily stress the need for the inter-dependence of the refactoring categories to be considered when making refactoring decisions and we base that need on a refactoring dependency graph developed as part of the research. We demonstrate that while incompatible refactorings may be harmful and time-consuming from a testing perspective, semantic-preserving refactorings can have equally unpleasant hidden ramifications despite their advantages. In fact, refactorings which fall into neither category have the most interesting properties. We support our results with empirical refactoring data drawn from seven Java open-source systems (OSS) and from the same analysis form a tentative categorization of code smells","PeriodicalId":441264,"journal":{"name":"Testing: Academic & Industrial Conference - Practice And Research Techniques (TAIC PART'06)","volume":"1 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2006-08-29","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"130701832","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"AutoAbstract: Problem Statement and Hypothetical Solutions","authors":"Shaukat Ali","doi":"10.1109/TAIC-PART.2006.4","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1109/TAIC-PART.2006.4","url":null,"abstract":"Automated abstraction of code into state-based specification and test generation (AutoAbstract) is a project funded by EPSRC. The aim of the project is to devise methods and a tool to abstract out specifications from the code using some hints from the developer. These specifications will be in the form of X-machines. It is assumed that these hints are available in the form of incomplete specifications and are refined using reverse-engineered X-machines. Finally, a method will be developed to generate concrete test cases from the refined X-machines and the tool will be updated accordingly. The main theme of my PhD lies within the AutoAbstract project. This PhD extended abstract will contain the technical challenges involved in the project followed by the parts of the work involved in the project that are linked to my interests. The proposed solutions to these parts will also be discussed","PeriodicalId":441264,"journal":{"name":"Testing: Academic & Industrial Conference - Practice And Research Techniques (TAIC PART'06)","volume":"os-35 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2006-08-29","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"127776648","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Extending Software Integration Testing Using Aspects in Symbian OS","authors":"Jani Pesonen","doi":"10.1109/TAIC-PART.2006.9","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1109/TAIC-PART.2006.9","url":null,"abstract":"A properly designed test harness is an important part of the quality verification of any software system. However, selection of the most important test cases for the harness is often difficult, since capturing the key characteristics related to the most important functionalities is not obvious. Aspect-oriented programming provides means for capturing such cross-cutting issues in systems and promising means for implementing test harnesses for embedded software. This paper studies an example of weaving testing aspects into existing Symbian OS software running on a mobile device. Proposed solution provides a cost-effective, scalable, easily adaptable, and non-tangling tool for testing certain system functionalities","PeriodicalId":441264,"journal":{"name":"Testing: Academic & Industrial Conference - Practice And Research Techniques (TAIC PART'06)","volume":"47 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2006-08-29","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"116110577","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Integration Testing of Components Guided by Incremental State Machine Learning","authors":"Keqin Li, Roland Groz, Muzammil Shahbaz","doi":"10.1109/TAIC-PART.2006.15","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1109/TAIC-PART.2006.15","url":null,"abstract":"The design of complex systems, e.g., telecom services, is nowadays usually based on the integration of components (COTS), loosely coupled in distributed architectures. When components come from third party sources, their internal structure is usually unknown and the documentation is insufficient. Therefore, the system integrator faces the problem of providing a required system assembling COTS whose behaviour is barely specified and for which no model is usually available. In this paper, we address the problem of integration testing of COTS. It combines test generation techniques with machine learning algorithms. State-based models of components are built from observed behaviours. The models are alternatively used to generate tests and extended to take into account observed behaviour. This process is iterated until a satisfactory level of confidence in testing is achieved","PeriodicalId":441264,"journal":{"name":"Testing: Academic & Industrial Conference - Practice And Research Techniques (TAIC PART'06)","volume":"23 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2006-08-29","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"131028076","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}