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+===================================================+
+======= Testing Techniques Newsletter (TTN) =======+
+======= ON-LINE EDITION =======+
+======= November 1994 =======+
+===================================================+
TESTING TECHNIQUES NEWSLETTER (TTN), On-Line Edition, is E-Mailed
monthly to support the Software Research, Inc. (SR) user community and
provide information of general use to the world software testing commun-
ity.
(c) Copyright 1994 by Software Research, Inc. Permission to copy and/or
re-distribute is granted to recipients of the TTN On-Line Edition pro-
vided that the entire document/file is kept intact and this copyright
notice appears with it.
TRADEMARKS: Software TestWorks, STW, STW/Regression, STW/Coverage,
STW/Advisor, X11 Virtual Display System, X11virtual and the SR logo are
trademarks of Software Research, Inc. All other systems are either
trademarks or registered trademarks of their respective companies.
========================================================================
INSIDE THIS ISSUE:
o Call for Papers: ISSTA 1995
o Featured Conference: Sympsium on Foundations of Computer Science
o Featured Conference: 19th Annual Software Engineering Workshop
o Call for Participation: AADEBUG'95
o Announcement: New Application Notes Released
o Announcement: CAPBAK/MSW Now Has OCR Capability
o Some Pointers on Function Points
o How To Use Coverage
o Upcoming Event: California Quality Awards Conference and Banquet
o Call for Papers: 8th INTERNATIONAL SOFTWARE QUALITY WEEK
o Calendar of Events
o TTN Submittal Policy
o TTN Subscription Information
========================================================================
CALL FOR PAPERS
International Symposium on Software Testing and Analysis (ISSTA 1995)
August 16-18, 1995 Denver, Colorado, U.S.A.
Sponsored by ACM SIGSOFT
ISSTA's purpose is to bring together researchers and practitioners who
are working in the areas of software testing and analysis. Papers of
either a theoretical or empirical nature describing original research in
testing or analysis for sequential, concurrent, distributed, or real-
time software are invited. Papers reporting in-depth analysis of real
experience with methods or tools are welcome. Proposals for panel ses-
sions on current testing and analysis topics are also invited.
REGULAR PAPERS should present a clear picture of the original contribu-
tions made and should relate the authors' work to prior work. Papers
must not have been previously published or submitted elsewhere. The
highest quality papers may be considered for publication in a special
issue or section of a research journal.
WORKSHOP PAPERS may present work in progress, experience reports,
smaller projects whose description does not require a full paper, or
analyses, reviews and opinions on the state of software testing practice
and research. Workshop papers will be evaluated primarily according to
their interest to the testing and analysis community.
Submitted papers should be printed 1-1/2 spaced, in a 12-point font.
Regular papers must not exceed 20 pages, including figures and refer-
ences. Workshop papers must not exceed 8 pages. A separate, one-page
abstract must be submitted 3 weeks before the full paper. All submis-
sions must be in English. The cover page of all submitted papers should
include title, names and affiliations of all authors, postal address and
telephone for the contact author, and E-mail address if available. The
one-page abstract should contain title, authors' names, affiliations,
and E-mail addresses, text of the abstract, and an indication of whether
the submission is a regular or a workshop paper. Do not change titles
between submission of abstract and paper.
PANEL PROPOSALS should include title, name and contact information of
the organizer, names of panelists, and a one-page description of the
topic. The panelists should have agreed to participate prior to submis-
sion of the proposal.
SUBMISSION DATES: Send seventeen (17) copies of the one-page abstract to
the Program Chair, to arrive by Jan 23, 1995. Five (5) copies of full
papers and panel proposals must be received by the Program Chair no
later than Feb. 13, 1995.
NOTIFICATION of acceptance or rejection will be mailed to authors by May
2, 1995.
Submissions arriving late, or not conforming to the format described
above, will not be considered.
GENERAL CHAIR PROGRAM CHAIR
Laurie Dillon Steven Zeil
Department of Computer Science Department of Computer Science
University of California, Santa Barbara Old Dominion University
Santa Barbara, CA Norfolk, VA 23529
Telephone: 805-893-3411 Telephone: 804-683-4832
FAX: 804-683-4900
dillon@cs.ucsb.edu zeil@cs.odu.edu
PROGRAM COMMITTEE
Jay Corbett U. of Hawaii
John Gannon U. of Maryland
Dick Hamlet Portland State U.
John Knight U. of Virginia
Edward Miller Software Research, Inc.
Jeff Offutt George Mason U.
Tom Ostrand Siemens Corporate Research
Andy Podgurski Case Western Reserve U.
Debra Richardson U. of California, Irvine
David Rosenblum AT&T Bell Laboratories
Pascale Thevenod LAAS-CNRS
Stewart Weiss Hunter College, CUNY
Martin Woodward U. of Liverpool
========================================================================
SYMPOSIUM ON
FOUNDATIONS OF COMPUTER SCIENCE
November 20-22, 1994
Santa Fe, New Mexico
The Thirty-fifth Annual symposium on Foundations of Computer Science,
sponsored by the IEEE Computer Society Technical Committee on Mathemati-
cal Foundations of Computing, will be held in Santa Fe, New Mexico on
November 20-22, 1994.
More information about the conference can be obtained from the Local
Arrangements Chair:
Sorin Istrail
Sandia National Laboratories
Department 1423, Algorithms and Discrete Mathematics
MS 1110
Albuquerque, NM 87185-1110, USA
Tel: (505) 845-7612
Fax: (505) 845-7442
email: scistra@cs.sandia.gov
========================================================================
19th Annual Software Engineering Workshop
November 30 - December 1, 1994
NASA/Goddard Space Flight Center
Greenbelt, MD
The 19th Annual Software Engineering Workshop is scheduled for Wednesday
and Thursday, November 30 - December 1, 1994 at the NASA/Goddard Space
Flight Center in the Building 8 Auditorium.
Software practitioners from around the world attend this forum to share
experiences and exchange ideas on the measurement, use, and evaluation
of software methods, models, and tools. The workshop will feature five
three-paper sessions, each approximately 1-1/2 hours long; a panel
presentation on a current topic in software engineering; and a tutorial
on measurement-based software process improvement as it is practiced in
the SEL.
For more information, contact:
Software Engineering Branch
NASA/Goddard Space Flight Center
Code 552
Greenbelt, MD 20771 USA
Phone: [+1] 301-286-6347
========================================================================
Call for Participation
AADEBUG'95
2nd International Workshop on Automated and Algorithmic Debugging
St Malo, France, May 22-24, 1995
Over the past decade automated debugging has seen major achievements.
However, as debugging is by necessity attached to particular programming
paradigms, the results are scattered. The aims of the workshop are to
gather common themes and solutions across programming communities, and
to cross-fertilize ideas. Original research as well as practical
experience reports are welcome.
The workshop will take place in a small castle in Saint Malo, a nice
place in Brittany on the sea side.
SEND SUBMISSIONS AND ENQUIRIES TO Mireille Ducasse INSA - Dept Informa-
tique 20, av. des Buttes de Coesmes F- 35042 Rennes Cedex France email:
ducasse@irisa.fr fax: +33 99 28 64 58
========================================================================
NEW APPLICATION NOTES RELEASED
Two new application notes describing use of CAPBAK in two applications
are now available.
o LAN Control of CAPBAK/MSW: This note explains how to control multi-
ple copies of CAPBAK/MSW from a single SMARTS script. This technique
will be useful for multi-user testing and load generation.
o Serial Application Selection Method: This note explains how to
manage fully automatic playback into multiple applications running
from a single PC under CAPBAK/MSW control. This method applies to
client-server applications when there are multiple clients on the
screen, each attached to a separate server. The playback happens with
full client-server synchronization.
For your copy please contact:
Software Research, Inc., 901 Minnesota Street, San Francisco, CA, USA
94107 USA, [+1] 415-550-3020, E-mail: info@soft.com
========================================================================
CAPBAK/MSW NOW HAS OCR CAPABILITY
Powerful OCR (Optical Character Recognition) technology has been made
part of CAPBAK/MSW (TM), Ver 2.3. The OCR feature is based on Xerox
Imaging Systems' technology, which is the same technology released for
CAPBAK/X (TM). The OCR feature permits CAPBAK/MSW play back synchroni-
zation independent of typefont and typesize, and has important addi-
tional uses in validating tests based on numerical values extracted from
saved images.
========================================================================
SOME POINTERS ON FUNCTION POINTS
An article titled "Function Points: Pro and Con" apeared in the
November 1994 issue of Software Development, written by Warren Keuffel
in his regular "Tools of the Trade" column. Function points, being a
method for quantifying software size and complexity -- even though it
appears to be done in a less-than-algorithmic method -- is an attractive
approach because in relates composition and testing effort alike to some
abstract measure of what each module (and, by indirect inference, each
system) is doing.
Keuffel points to J. Brian Dreger's book "Function Point Analysis"
(Prentice Hall, 1989) as a primary reference, but because he considers
it "woefully out of date" he further recommends the International Func-
tion Point (FP) Users' Group (IFPUG) Counting Practices Manual, v. 4.0,
1994.
What it is all about is simple: FP's correlate very nicely with defect
detections, are "intuitively obvious" to the user (and, if not to every-
one else that is their ignorance), and are a lot easier to deal with
that the cylomatic number (e - n + 2). The name of the game in any
estimating metric, of course, is to have a high correlation with some
cost-related factor, and the FP approach meets that test nicely.
Contact Keuffel at 76702.525@compuserve or wpk@slc.unisys.COM.
-EFM
========================================================================
HOW TO USE COVERAGE
There are many different ways to use code coverage analysis, and as many
ways to develop code as there are developers to do it. One suggested
method, which has proven itself, is as follows:
A large portion of the code gets written at once, without doing specific
unit testing, and without testing coverage. The developer might run
pieces of the code through a debugger, but actual coverage analysis does
not begin yet.
After the routines have been completed, tests should be designed based
on the routines, and on the subsystem's external specification, if there
is one. At this point, it is not necessarily useful to test isolated
routines. What works as a unit may not work when integrated with other
routines, and vice versa.
Test designs can be based on related routines in the subsystem, and
should be automated whenever possible. Each test can be run immediately
against an instrumented subsystem, but coverage is still not yet
analyzed. Find the bugs first. If bugs are bad enough to cause further
tests to fail, it should be fixed. Otherwise, discovered bugs can be
fixed when the whole group has been tested. After those bugs have been
fixed, new tests should be designed for them and added to the group,
then that group should be tested again.
At this point, examining coverage of the changed routines becomes use-
ful. Coverage of the changed lines should be good, as should coverage
for the rest of the routines; if it is not, the tests checking the bug
fixes are likely inadequate. If that is the case, tests can be
improved, and coverage should then be rechecked.
While all of this fixing is going on, the automated tests should be
rerun every night. That catches cases, for example, where something
fixed in one routine breaks something in some distant, seemingly unre-
lated routine.
When all the fixing is finished, the test suite should be run one last
time, to be certain that all coverage information is valid. Coverage
results point out areas in the test design where coverage was less com-
plete than it should be; test designs again need to be improved. The
new tests get run, rechecking coverage, repeating as necessary.
Finally, the entire test suite (including any semi-automated and manual
testing) gets run and coverage is checked again, catching cases again
where any bugfixes invalidated previous coverage results.
========================================================================
CALIFORNIA QUALITY AWARDS
Conference and Awards Banquet
The California Council for Quality and Service is sponsoring the "Cali-
fornia Quality Awards" conference and awards banquet to honor the
winners of the 1994 California Quality Awards. The event will be Thurs-
day and Friday, November 17-18, 1994, at the Ritz-Carlton Huntington
Hotel in Pasadena, California.
In addition to the Awards Dinner and Presentations, several speakers
will be featured, addressing the Malcolm Baldrige Award Criteria.
For general information, call [+1] 619-491-3050.
========================================================================
INTERNATIONAL SOFTWARE QUALITY WEEK `95 (QW '95)
Conference Theme: The Client-Server Revolution
San Francisco, California 30 May - 2 June 1995
QW `95 is the eighth in a continuing series of Conferences focusing on
advances in software test technology, quality control, risk management,
software safety, and test automation. Software analysis methodologies,
supported by advanced automated software test methods, promise major
advances in system quality and reliability, assuming continued competi-
tiveness.
The QW `95 program consists of four days of mini-tutorials, panels,
techni cal papers and workshops that focus on software test automation
and new technology. QW `95 provides the software testing and QA/QC com-
munity with:
Quality Assurance and Test involvement in the development process.
Exchange of information among technologists.
State-of-the-art information on software test methods.
Analysis of effectiveness through case studies.
Vendor Technical Presentations
Two-Day Vendor Show
For more information, please contact: Ms. Rita Bral, Software Research
Institute, 901 Minnesota Street, San Francisco, CA 94107 USA. For informa-
tion on the conference, E-mail your request to qw@soft.com, phone
SR/Institute at (415) 550-3020, or FAX SR/Institute at (415) 550-3030.
========================================================================
---------------------->>> CALENDAR OF EVENTS <<<----------------------
========================================================================
The following is a partial list of upcoming events of interest. ("o"
indicates Software Research will participate in these events.)
+ November 17-18: California Quality Awards
Presentation Banquet and Education Conference
Ritz-Carlton Huntington Hotel
Pasadena, California
Phone: [+1] 619-491-3050
+ November 20-22: Symposium on Foundations of Computer Science
Santa Fe, New Mexico
Contact: Sorin Istrail
Sandia National Laboratories
Phone: [+1] 505-845-7612
Fax: [+1] 505-845-7442
email: scistra@cs.sandia.gov
+ November 22-24: Software Development '94
NEC Hall 7, Birmingham, LONDON
Contact: Lynne Davey
Phone: 081 742 2828
+ November 28: PCTE'94
San Francisco, CA
Contact: Prof. Tim Lindquist
Arizona State University
fax: [+1] 602-965-2751
email: Lindquist@asu.edu
+ November 30 - December 1: 6th Annual Open Systems World
Washington Convention Center
Washington, D.C.
Contact: Alan Fedder
Phone: [+1] 301-953-9600
fax: [+1] 301-953-2213
+ November 30 - December 1: 19th Annual Software Engineering Workshop
Goddard Space Flight Center
Greenbelt, MD
Contact: Jon Valett
Phone: [+1] 301-286-6564
fax: [+1] 301-286-1763
e-mail: jon.valett@gsfc.nasa.gov
+ December 5-7: ICSQP '94
1st IFIP/SQI International (Asia-Pacific)
Conference on Software Quality and Productivity
City Polytechnic of Hong Kong, HONG KONG
Contact: Dr. Matthew Lee
ICSQP '94 Program Committee Co-Chair
Phone: +852-788-7348
fax: +852-788-8694
e-mail: ismatlee@cphkvx.cphk.hk
+ December 7-8: Database and Client/Server World
Chicago, IL
Contact: Charles Hurth
DCI
Phone: [+1] 408-280-6778
fax: [+1] 408-280-6779
+ February 22-25: Uniforum 1995
Dallas Convention Center
Dallas, TX
Contact: [+1] 800-545-EXPO
========================================================================
------------>>> TTN SUBMITTAL POLICY <<<------------
========================================================================
The TTN On-Line Edition is forwarded on the 15th of each month to sub-
scribers via InterNet. To have your event listed in an upcoming issue,
please e-mail a description of your event or Call for Papers or Partici-
pation to "ttn@soft.com".
The TTN On-Line submittal policy is as follows:
o Submission deadlines indicated in "Calls for Papers" should provide
at least a 1-month lead time from the TTN On-Line issue date. For
example, submission deadlines for "Calls for Papers" in the January
issue of TTN On-Line would be for February and beyond.
o Length of submitted items should not exceed 68 lines (one page).
o Publication of submitted items is determined by Software Research,
Inc., and may be edited as necessary.
========================================================================
----------------->>> TTN SUBSCRIPTION INFORMATION <<<-----------------
========================================================================
To request a FREE subscription or submit articles, please E-mail
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Note: To order back copies of the TTN On-Line (August 1993 onward),
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TESTING TECHNIQUES NEWSLETTER
Software Research, Inc.
901 Minnesota Street
San Francisco, CA 94107 USA
Phone: (415) 550-3020
Toll Free: (800) 942-SOFT
FAX: (415) 550-3030
E-mail: ttn@soft.com
## End ##