CALL-FOR-PAPERS
Workshop on Automation of Software Test (AST'06)
At 28th International Conference on
Software Engineering (ICSE'06)
(http://www.icse-conferences.org/2006/)
Sponsored by Avaya Labs, USA
Online Submission Website is
now open: http://cyberchair.acm.org/astpapers/submit/
Software testing is indispensable for all software development. As all mature engineering disciplines need to have systematic testing methodologies, software testing is a very important subject of software engineering. In software development practice, testing accounts for as much as 50% of total development efforts. It is imperative to reduce the cost and improve the effectiveness of software testing by automating the testing process, which contains many testing related activities using various techniques and methods.
Automation is the future trend of software testing in order to reduce its cost. In the past decades, a great amount of research effort has been spent on automatic test case generation, automatic test oracles, etc. However, the current practice of software test automation is mostly based on recording manual testing activities and replaying recorded test scripts for regression testing. Bridging the gap between theory and practice will not only significantly improve the current-state of software production, but also foster innovative research in the area. As the theories of software testing become more mature, a deeper automation of the testing process becomes feasible. Indeed, a large number of software test tools have been developed in the past a few years and become available on the market. However, few of them have taken inter-operability into serious consideration. Software systems have become more and more complicated with components developed by different vendors and using different techniques in different programming languages and even run on different platforms. Few software testing tools can support all testing tasks within one tool. Therefore, it is timely and important for the development of software testing methodologies and scientific discipline as a part of software engineering. The workshop will provide researchers and practitioners a forum for exchanging ideas, experiences, understanding of the problems, visions for the future, and promising solutions to the problems. The workshop will also provide a platform for researchers and developers of testing tools to work together to identify the problems in the theory and practice of software test automation and to set an agenda and lay the foundation for future development.
THEME AND TOPICS
The theme of the workshop focuses on bridging the gap between the theories and practice of software test automation. The topics covered by the workshop include, but are not limited to, the following: (more details can be found in the call-for-papers)
1)
Methodology: Software
test automation in the context of various software development methodologies,
such as in
traditional heavy weight
methodologies,
rapid prototyping and evolutionary
development methodology,
component-based software
development, and object-oriented software development,
agile and test-driven methodology,
software architecture and product
lines,
service-oriented software
engineering, etc.
2) Technology: Automation of various test
techniques and methods used in various test related activities, such as
The techniques that enable various
testing activities to be automated, such as test
case generation,
test oracle and test result
checking,
test driver, stubs, harness and
test script generation,
test adequacy and coverage
measurement,
test effective analysis, and test report generation,
test related software artifact
generation,
maintenance, and reuses, management
of testing activities and recourses, etc.
The techniques that support various
software testing methods, such as
structural testing,
functional testing,
error based testing,
fault-based testing,
partition testing and combinatorial
testing,
random testing,
usability testing, performance testing,
load testing and stress testing,
program-based testing,
specification based testing,
model-based testing,
risk-based testing, etc.
Techniques
that support the testing of various specific types of software in various
application domains, such as for testing
Internet
and Web-based applications, such as web services, Peer-to-peer applications and
Grid systems, semantic web, search engines, etc.
Database
applications and information systems,
Systems
software such as middleware, architecture and reference models, XML schemes,
compilers, OS, etc.
Ubiquity,
pervasive and mobile computing systems,
Multimedia
and hypermedia applications,
Security
protocols and application systems, encryption and decryption algorithms,
Real-time
systems, concurrent and parallel systems, communication systems and protocols,
embedded systems,
Applications of AI techniques, such as data mining
systems, machine learning algorithms, agents and multi-agent systems,
ontologies, neuron networks, etc.
3) Software testing tools and environments: Issues in the
development, operation, maintenance and evolution of software testing tools and
environments, such as
The functional, architectural and
interface design of automated software testing tools and environments;
The construction of practical and
prototype systems of automated testing and implementation issues;
Evolution of testing tools and
environments as software artifacts evolve and change and as software standards
and development methods changes;
Evaluation of software testing
tools and environments;
Integration
and interoperation of various types of software testing tools efficiently and
effectively, and with other types of software development and maintenance tools
and development environments such as
model-driven development environments,
configuration management tools,
model-checking and software verification tools,
software metrics and measurement tools, etc.
4) Experiments, empirical studies and experience reports and vision of
the future:
Experiments and empirical studies and comparison of
software test automation, and reports on real experiences using automated
testing techniques, methods and tools in industry, such as
the effectiveness of automated
testing tools, methods and techniques, such as fault detecting abilities;
the cost of building the automation
versus savings from the automation;
the usability of various
techniques, methods and tools;
The identification of problems that
hamper the wider adaptation of automated test techniques, methods and tools;
The analysis and specification of
the requirements on automated software testing.
SUBMISSION
Papers
submitted to the workshop must be unpublished original work. The papers must be
in English and in the format of ACM conference proceedings within the length of
5-7 pages and in either PDF or postscript format. Submissions must be made
through online upload to the workshop paper submission website at http://cyberchair.acm.org/astpapers/submit/ before the deadline on
All
submissions will be reviewed by three workshop PC members. Acceptance of papers
for presentation at the workshop will be based on the merits and their relevance
to the objective of the workshop. Announcement of acceptance/rejection will be
made on
PUBLICATION OF PAPERS
The accepted workshop papers will be published in the ICSE’06 conference proceedings by ACM Press. It will be distributed onsite together with the proceedings via USB-Stick or CD-ROM and be available via ACM digital Library. Authors of accepted papers are required to register to the workshop and present the paper at the workshop in order for the paper to be included in the proceedings and ACM Digital Library. After the workshop, the authors of selected best papers will be invited to submit a significantly revised and extended version of their papers for consideration of publication either as a special issue in a journal or as an edited book, which will subject to another round of refereeing. Details will be announced at the workshop.
IMPORTANT DATES
Submission deadline: 1 February 2006
Notification of acceptance: 1
March 2006
Camera-Ready version: 14 March
2006
Workshop date: 23 May 2006
WORKSHOP ORGANIZERS
Prof. Hong Zhu,
Department
of Computing,
Email: hzhu@brookes.ac.uk,
Tel: 0044 1865 484580, Fax: 0044 1865 484545
Dr. Joseph R Horgan
Telcordia Technologies,
Email: jrh@research.telcordia.com
Tel: 732-699-2580, Fax: 732-336-7015
Department
of Computer Science
The
Email: sccheung@cs.ust.hk
Tel: +852 2358-7016; Fax: +852 2358-1477
Chair of
Publicity and Local Organization
J. Jenny Li, Avaya Labs, USA
PROGRAM
COMMITTEE
W.K. Chan, Hong Kong Univ. of Sci. & Tech.,
Hong Kong
T.Y. Chen, Swinburne University of Technology,
Australia
Donghui Guo, Xiamen University, China
Rob Hieron, Brunel University, UK
Chandra Kintala, Stevens Institute of Technology,
USA
J. Jenny Li, Avaya Labs, USA
Shoaying Liu, Hosei University, Japan
Aditya Mathur, Purdue
University, USA
John
May, University of Bristol, UK
Phil McMinn, University of Sheffield, UK
Allen Nikora, Jet Propulsion
Lab, USA
Jeff Offutt, George Mason University, USA
Mark Segal, Telcordia, USA
Rudolph Seviora, University of Waterloo, Canada
T.H. Tse, The University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong
Hasan Ural, University of
Ottawa, Canada
Ji Wang, National University of Def. Technology,
China
Eric Wong, University of Texas at Dallas, USA
Martin Woodward, University of Liverpool, UK
Tao Xie, North Carolina
State University, USA
Baowen Xu, Southeast
University, China
Howell Yee, MIT Lincoln Lab, USA
Jia Zhang, Northern Illinois
University, USA