Test Infected

General page: http://www.iaria.org/conferences2010/VALID10.html
Call for Papers: http://www.iaria.org/conferences2010/CfPVALID10.html

Submission deadline: March 20, 2010

Sponsored by IARIA, www.iaria.org
Extended versions of selected papers will be published in IARIA Journals: http://www.iariajournals.org
Publisher: CPS ( see: http://www2.computer.org/portal/web/cscps )
Archived: IEEE CSDL (Computer Science Digital Library) and IEEE Xplore Submitted for indexing: Elsevier’s EI Compendex Database, EI’s Engineering Information Index Other indexes are being considered: INSPEC, DBLP, Thomson Reuters Conference Proceedings Citation Index

Please note the Poster Forum and Work in Progress options.

The topics suggested by the conference can be discussed in term of concepts, state of the art, research, standards, implementations, running experiments, applications, and industrial case studies. Authors are invited to submit complete unpublished papers, which are not under review in any other conference or journal in the following, but not limited to, topic areas.

All tracks are open to both research and industry contributions, in terms of Regular papers, Posters, Work in progress, Technical/marketing/business presentations, Demos, Tutorials, and Panels.

Before submission, please check and conform with the Editorial rules: http://www.iaria.org/editorialrules.html

VALID 2010 Tracks (tracks’ topics and submission details: see CfP on the site)

Robust design methodologies
Designing methodologies for robust systems; Secure software techniques; Industrial real-time software; Defect avoidance; Cost models for robust systems; Design for testability; Design for reliability and variability; Design for adaptation and resilience; Design for fault-tolerance and fast recovery; Design for manufacturability, yield and reliability; Design for testability in the context of model-driven engineering

Vulnerability discovery and resolution
Vulnerability assessment; On-line error detection; Vulnerabilities in hardware security; Self-calibration; Alternative inspections; Non-intrusive vulnerability discovery methods; Embedded malware detection

Defects and Debugging
Debugging techniques; Component debug; System debug; Software debug; Hardware debug; System debug; Power-ground defects; Full-open defects in interconnecting lines; Physical defects in memories and microprocessors; Zero-defect principles

Diagnosis
Diagnosis techniques; Advances in silicon debug and diagnosis; Error diagnosis; History-based diagnosis; Multiple-defect diagnosis; Optical diagnostics; Testability and diagnosability; Diagnosis and testing in mo bile environments

System and feature testing
Test strategy for systems-in-package; Testing embedded systems; Testing high-speed systems; Testing delay and performance; Testing communication traffic and QoS/SLA metrics; Testing robustness; Software testing; Hardware testing; Supply-chain testing; Memory testing; Microprocessor testing; Mixed-signal production test; Testing multi-voltage domains; Interconnection and compatibility testing

Testing techniques and mechanisms
Fundamentals for digital and analog testing; Emerging testing methodologies; Engineering test coverage; Designing testing suites; Statistical testing; Functional testing; Parametric testing; Defect- and data-driven testing; Automated testing; Embedded testing; Autonomous self-testing; Low cost testing; Optimized testing; Testing systems and devices; Test standards

Testing of wireless communications systems Testing of mobile wireless communication systems; Testing of wireless sensor networks; Testing of radio-frequency identification systems; Testing of ad-hoc networks; Testing methods for emerging standards; Hardware-based prototyping of wireless communication systems; Physical layer performance verification; On-chip testing of wireless communication systems; Modeling and simulation of wireless channels; Noise characterization and validation; Case studies and industrial applications of test instruments;

Software verification and validation
High-speed interface verification and fault-analysis; Software testing theory and practice; Model-based testing; Verification metrics; Service/application specific testing; Model checking; OO software testing; Testing embedded software; Quality assurance; Empirical studies for verification and validation; Software inspection techniques; Software testing tools; New approaches for software reliability verification and validation

Testing and validation of run-time evolving systems Automated testing for run-time evolving systems; Testing and validation of evolving systems; Testing and validation of self-controlled systems; Testing compile-time versus run-time dependency for evolving systems; On-line validation and testing of evolving at run-time systems; Modeling for testability of evolving at run-time systems; Near real-time and real-time monitoring of run-time evolving systems; Verification and validation of reflective models for testing; Verification and validation of fault tolerance in run-time evolving systems

Feature-oriented testing
Testing user interfaces and user-driven features; Privacy testing; Ontology accuracy testing; Testing semantic matching; Testing certification processes; Testing authentication mechanisms; Testing biometrics methodologies and mechanisms; Testing cross-nation systems; Testing system interoperability; Testing system safety; Testing system robustness; Testing temporal constraints; Testing transaction-based properties; Directed energy test capabilities /microwave, laser, etc./; Testing delay and latency metrics

Domain-oriented testing
Testing autonomic and autonomous systems; Testing intrusion prevention systems; Firewall testing; Information assurance testing; Testing social network systems; Testing recommender systems; Testing biometric systems; Testing diagnostic systems; Testing on-line systems; Testing financial systems; Testing life threatening systems; Testing emergency systems; Testing sensor-based systems; Testing testing systems

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VALID Advisory Chairs
Amirhossein Alimohammad, Ukalta Engineering/CTO, Canada Andrea Baruzzo, Università degli Studi di Udine, Italy Lydie du Bousquet, Laboratoire d’Informatique de Grenoble (LIG), France Petre Dini, Concordia University, Canada / IARIA Henry Muccini, University of L’Aquila, Italy

VALID 2010 Research Institute Liaison Chairs Alexander Klaus, Fraunhofer Institute for Experimental Software Engineering (IESE), Germany Juho Perälä, VTT Technical Research Centre of Finland, Finland

VALID 2010 Industry/Research Liaison Chairs Davide Pandini, STMicroelectronics – Agrate Brianza, Italy Juho Perälä, VTT Technical Research Centre of Finland, Finland Raj Senguttuvan, Texas Instruments – Dallas, USA Avik Sinha, IBM TJ Watson Research Center – Hawthorne, USA Alin Stefanescu, SAP Research, Germany Bart Vermeulen, NXP Semiconductors, The Netherlands

VALID 2010 Special Area Chairs
Testing of wireless communications systems
Amirhossein Alimohammad, Ukalta Engineering/CTO, Canada Testing and validation of run-time evolving systems
Stefan van Baelen, KU Leuven Belgium
Hans-Gerhard Gross, Delft University of Technology, The Netherlands

Committee members: http://www.iaria.org/conferences2010/ComVALID10.html

Stressful Application Test (or stressapptest, its unix name) tries to maximize randomized traffic to memory from processor and I/O, with the intent of creating a realistic high load situation in order to test the existing hardware devices in a computer. It has been used at Google for some time and now it is available under the apache 2.0 license.

http://code.google.com/p/stressapptest/

(from InfoQ) Automated tests that are brittle and expensive to maintain have led to companies abandoning test automation initiatives, according to Dale Emery. In a newly published paper, Dale shares some practical ways to avoid common problems with test automation. He starts with some typical automation code and evolves in ways that make it more robust, and less expensive to maintain.

full text

(from InfoQ) In this presentation, Jason Huggins discusses why Selenium exists, Selenium as a functional testing tool, problems with using Selenium, the history of Selenium, JWebUnit, DriftWood, JsUnit, Fit, Selenium core, Selenium IDE, Selenium Remote Control, Selenium Grid, issues encountered doing functional testing in the browser, and Selenium hacks to work around these issues.

full text and video

http://java.dzone.com/articles/benefits-testable-code

“You’re probably writing 2-5% of the integration tests you need to test thoroughly. You’re probably duplicating unit tests all over the place. Your integration tests probably duplicate each other all over the place. When an integration test fails, who knows what’s broken? Learn the two-pronged attack that solves the problem: collaboration tests and contract tests”.

full video-presentation at InfoQ:  Integration Tests Are a Scam

The component testability is an important attribute to evaluate the quality of a given software product and exposes the degree to which a software artifact facilitates the testing process. A lower degree of testability results in increase test effort. Depending on the methods used, testing activities account for 25% to 90% of total project effort [1, 2, 3, 4].

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Components and software with good testability not only increase the quality of software, but also reduce the cost of software development and testing. According to [1], software testing usually costs more than 40% of the software project budget during the life cycle of a software product. Thus, designing highly testable software components becomes a very important and challenging task for component developers. Similarly, verifying and measuring the testability and quality of software components is also very important and challenging for application engineers and component users.

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The increasing visibility of software as a system element and the attendant “costs” associated with a software failure are motivating forces for well-planned, thorough testing. It is not unusual for a software development organization to expend 40 percent of total project effort on testing. In the extreme, the testing of human-rated software (e.g., flight control, nuclear reactor monitoring) can cost three to five times as much as all other software engineering steps combined! [2].

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Evaluation and testing procedures have a high cost in practice (expenditures in this sector are estimated to be 25% to 50% of the software development time and cost [3].

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Historically, the process of identifying and correcting defects during the software development process represents over half of development costs. Depending on the accounting methods used, testing activities account for 30 to 90 percent of labor expended to produce a working program [4].

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REFERENCES
[1] S. Jungmayr, “Reviewing Software Artifacts for Testability”, Proc. of EuroSTAR’99, Barcelona, Spain, November 10-12, 1999.
[2] R. S. Pressman, “Software Engineering: Practitioner’s Approach”, European 3rd Edition, McGraw-Hill Book Company, Berkshire, England, 1994, pp. 609.
[3] T. Koomen, M. Pol, “Test Process Improvement: A Practical Step-by-Step Guide to Structured Testing”, Addison-Wesley, 1999.
[4] B. Beizer, “Software Testing Techniques”, International Thomson Computer Press, Boston, 1990.