Seminars on Software Test Automation: Challenging the Complexity

Hong Zhu

Department of Computing, Oxford Brookes University , Oxford OX33 1HX , UK

Email: hzhu@brookes.ac.uk

(1) Title: Data Mutation: A Method for Automated Generation of Structurally Complex Test Cases

Date and time: 24 August 2009, Monday, 3:00pm,

Venue: The National University of Defence Technology, Department of Computer Science, Changsha, China

Abstract

Generation of adequate test cases is difficult and expensive, especially for testing software systems whose input is large and structurally complex. This talk will present an approach called data mutation to generating a large number of test data from a few seed test cases. The talk will present the idea of data mutation, its testing process and measurement of success. It will report a case study in its application to a modelling tool to demonstrate its effectiveness to test complicated systems. We will also discuss its potential applications in various types of applications as well as the perspective on the integration of data mutation testing method with other black box testing techniques such as metamorphic testing and algebraic testing techniques.

Related Publications:

Hong Zhu: Data Mutation Testing Applied to a Modelling Tool. GI Jahrestagung (1) 2008. pp175-176. (Extended abstract of keynote speech at MOTES'08). 

Lijun Shan and Hong Zhu, Generating Structurally Complex Test Cases by Data Mutation: A Case Study of Testing an Automated Modelling Tool, Special Issue on Automation of Software Test, the Computer Journal. (Available online as Advance Access,  doi:10.1093/comjnl/bxm043). June 28, 2007. 

Shan, L. and Zhu, H., Testing Software Modelling Tools Using Data Mutation, Proc. of AST’06, Shanghai, China, May 23, 2006. ACM Press.

(2) Title: Automated Testing of Software Components Based On Algebraic Specifications: Method, Tool And Experiments.

Date and time:25 August 2009, Tuesday, 3:00pm,

Venue: The National University of Defence Technology, Department of Computer Science, Changsha, China

Abstract

This talk presents a method of component testing based on algebraic specifications. An algorithm for generating checkable test cases is proposed. A prototype testing tool called CASCAT for testing Java Enterprise Beans is developed. It has the advantages of high degree of automation, which include test case generation, test harness construction and test result checking. It achieves scalability by allowing incremental integration. It also allows testing to focus on a subset of used functions and key properties, thus suitable for component testing. The talk also reports two experiments. The first is an evaluation of the method and the tool on fault detecting ability. The second is an evaluation of the cost of writing algebraic specifications.

Related publications:

Bo Yu, Liang Kong, Yufeng Zhang, and Hong Zhu, Testing Java Components Based on Algebraic Specifications, Proc. of ICST 2008, April 9-11, 2008, Lillehammer , Norway , pp190-199. 

Liang Kong, Hong Zhu and Bin Zhou, Automated Testing EJB Components Based on Algebraic Specifications, Proceeding of the First IEEE International Workshop on Testing Emergent Software Technologies (TEST 2007), Beijing, China, July 27, 2007. in Proc. of COMPSAC 2007 Vol. 2, pp717-722. IEEE CS Press 2007. 

(3) Title: An Experimental Study of the Reliability of Adaptive Random Testing

Date and time: 26 August 2009, Wednesday, 3:00pm

Venue: The National University of Defence Technology, Department of Computer Science, Changsha, China

Abstract

Adaptive random testing (ART) techniques have been proposed in the literature to improve the effectiveness of random testing (RT) by evenly distributing test cases over the input space. Simulations and mutation analyses of various ART techniques have demonstrated their improvements on fault detecting ability when measured by the number of test cases required to detect the first fault. In this talk, we report an experiment with ART using mutants to evaluate ART’s reliability in fault detecting ability. Our experiment discovered that ART is more reliable than RT in the sense that its degree of variation in fault detecting ability is significantly lower than RT. It is also recognized from the experiment data that the two main factors that affect ART’s reliability are the failure rate of the system under test and the regularity of the failure domain measured by the standard deviation of random test results.

Related Publication:

Yu Liu and Hong Zhu, An Experimental Evaluation of the Reliability of Adaptive Random Testing Methods, Proc. of The Second IEEE International Conference on Secure System Integration and Reliability Improvement (SSIRI 2008), Yokohama , Japan, July 14-17, 2008, pp24-31.  

(4)  Title: Collaborative Testing of Web Services: The Service oriented framework and implementation in Semantic Web Services

Date and time:8 September 2009, (time to be announced),

Venue: Department of Computer Science and Technology, Tsinghua University , Beijing , China

Abstract

This talk proposes a service oriented architecture for collaborative testing of Web Services (WS) using Semantic Web Services. In this architecture, test tasks are completed through the collaboration of various WS that provide and request test services and related information. Such test services are registered, discovered and invoked at runtime using the ontology of software testing called STOWS (Software Testing Ontology for WS). The composition of test services can, for example, be realized by using test brokers, which are also test services but specialized in the composition and coordination of test services. The ontology can be extended and updated through an ontology management service so that it can be populated for supporting a wide and open range of test activities, methods, techniques as well as for dealing with various types of software artifacts in different formats. The talk also presents a prototype implementation of the architecture in the framework of Semantic WS using OWL-S to represent the ontology STOWS and use Matchmaker to search for test services based on semantic information. A prototype test broker has also been developed to support the composition of test services. Three case studies are reported to demonstrate the feasibility of the architecture. They illustrate how to wrap a general purpose software testing tool into a test service, how to develop a specific test service for performing test executions of a WS, and how to collaborate test services to conduct more complicate testing tasks.

Related publications:

Yufeng Zhang and Hong Zhu, Ontology for Service Oriented Testing of Web Services, Proc. of The Fourth IEEE International Symposium on Service-Oriented System Engineering (SOSE 2008), Dec. 18-19, 2008, Taiwan.

Hong Zhu, A Framework for Service-Oriented Testing of Web Services, 3rd International Workshop on Quality Assurance and Testing Web-based Applications, Proc. of COMPSAC’06, Sept. 2006, Chicago, USA, pp679-691.

(5)   Title: Derivation and analysis of software quality based on architectural designs

Date and time: 9 Sept. 2009

Venue: Key Laboratory of High Confidence Software Technologies, and Institute of Software, School of Electronics Engineering and Computing, Science, Peking University, China

Abstract:

This talk will present a method to systematically analyze software quality based on architectural designs and its automated supporting SQUARE (Software QUality and ARchitecture modeling Environment). The method mode-based method, which follows a structured process to systematically derive quality models from software architectural designs by adapting and applying the principles of system hazard analysis. Through the identification of potential quality hazards and their consequences, the quality related properties of the components and connectors and the causal relationships between them are derived and then translated into a quality model represented in a graphical notation. The tool SQUARE enables automated analysis of the quality models in the graphical notation to recognize a number of types of software quality features, which include quality sensitive components, quality risks and quality trade-off points, etc. A case study with a real e-commerce system will also be reported.

Related Publications:

Qian Zhang,  Jian Wu,  Hong Zhu, Tool Support to Model-based Quality Analysis of Software Architectures, COMPSAC’06, Chicago, USA, IEEE CS, Sept. 2006, pppp121-128.

Qian Zhang and Hong Zhu, Automated Analysis of Software Designs with Graphic Quality Models, Proc. of The 10th WSEAS International Conference on Computers, Vouliagmeni, Athens, Greece, July 13-15, 2006, also in WSEAS Transactions on Computers, Vol. 5, Issue 10, Oct. 2006, ISSN 1109-2750, pp2232-2237.

Zhu, H., Software Design Methodology - From Principles to Architectural Styles, Elsevier Science and Technology, Elsevier Science, 2005.

Zhu, H., Zhang, Y., Huo, Q. and Greenwood, S., Application of Hazard Analysis to Quality Modelling, proc. of IEEE COMPSAC’2002, Oxford, UK, 26~29 August, 2002, pp139~144.