Extending The Reach Of Statistical Software Testing

Statistical software testing is a promising technique for reducing the software testing burden by applying test cases to the software under test according to a model of the expected usage of the system in operation, called an operational profile. However, current statistical testing techniques have not been put into general practice, as they do not scale well as the complexity of the systems under test increases. In particular, as system complexity increases, the matrices required to generate test cases and perform model analysis can grow dramatically, even exponentially, overwhelming the test generation and analysis applications. In this work, a new technique for representing the operational profile is proposed to mitigate the complexity issue for statistical test case generation. The use of a state-based requirements specification model as the basis of the operational profile leverages parallelism to reduce the visible size of the model. The specification model can then be extended to include conditional probabilities of input data occurrence. * This work also proposes a statistical testing framework using this specification-based operational profile to generate and execute test cases. Such a framework allows us to evaluate the effectiveness and efficiency of this statistical testing technique.

This book contains the post-conference proceedings of the 17th International Conference on Inductive Logic Programming. It covers current topics in inductive logic programming, from theoretical and methodological issues to advanced applications.

Typically, landscape ecologists use empirical observations to conduct research and devise solutions for applied problems in conservation and management. In some instances, they rely on advice and input of experienced professionals in both developing and applying knowledge. Given the wealth of expert knowledge and the risks of its informal and implicit applications in landscape ecology, it is necessary to formally recognize and characterize expert knowledge and bring rigor to methods for its applications. In this context, the broad goal of this book is to introduce the concept of expert knowledge and examine its role in landscape ecological applications. We plan to do so in three steps: First we introduce the topic to landscape ecologists, explore salient characteristics of experts and expert knowledge, and describe methods used in capturing and formalizing that knowledge. Second, we present examples of research in landscape ecology from a variety of ecosystems and geographic locations that formally incorporate expert knowledge. These case studies address a range of topics that will interest landscape ecologists and other resource management and conservation professionals including the specific roles of expert knowledge in developing, testing, parameterizing, and applying models; estimating the uncertainty in expert knowledge; developing methods of formalizing and incorporating expert knowledge; and using expert knowledge as competing models and a source of alternate hypotheses. Third, we synthesize the state of knowledge on this topic and critically examine the advantages and disadvantages of incorporating expert knowledge in landscape ecological applications. The disciplinary subject areas we address are broad and cover much of the scope of contemporary landscape ecology, including broad-scale forest management and conservation, quantifying forest disturbances and succession, conservation of habitats for a range of avian and mammal species, vulnerability and conservation of marine ecosystems, and the spread and impacts of invasive plants. This text incorporates the collective experience and knowledge of over 35 researchers in landscape ecology representing a diverse range of disciplinary subject areas and geographic locations. Through this text, we will catalyze further thought and investigations on expert knowledge among the target readership of researchers, practitioners, and graduate students in landscape ecology.

This book constitutes the refereed proceedings of the 5th Software Quality Days Conference (SWQD) held in Vienna, Austria, in January 2013. This professional symposium and conference offers a range of comprehensive and valuable opportunities for advanced professional training, new ideas, and networking with a series of keynote speeches, professional lectures, exhibits, and tutorials. The seven scientific full papers accepted for SWQD were each peer-reviewed by three or more reviewers and selected out of 18 high-quality submissions. Further, two keynotes and six short papers on promising research directions were also presented and included in order to spark discussions between researchers and practitioners. The papers are organized into topical sections on risk management; software and systems testing; test processes; model-based development; and process improvement and measurement.

This two-volume set CCIS 173 and CCIS 174 constitutes the extended abstracts of the posters presented during the 14th International Conference on Human-Computer Interaction, HCII 2011, held in Orlando, FL, USA in July 2011, jointly with 12 other thematically similar conferences. A total of 4039 contributions was submitted to HCII 2011, of which 232 poster papers were carefully reviewed and selected for presentation as extended abstracts in the two volumes.

The Eureka Software Factory project (ESF) was set up by a Group of European partners in 1987. Its objective was broadly to improve the large-scale software production process by introducing an industrialised approach to have The Software Factory Challenge social, organisational and technical aspects. The project was set up under the pan-European Eureka programme, and it was funded by the partners together with their national governments. This book is not a history of the ESF project, but rather a presentation of its main ideas and achievements, and an account of how the concepts pioneered by the project have become part of a general movement in both the industrial and academic domains. In this movement, the facility for the production, use and maintenance of large-scale computer artefacts (the Software Factory) is treated in a wide and `organic' way, so as to include concepts such as business value and process improvement; with the development of new technologies being driven by these new, wide requirements. This new approach is in contrast with a narrowly technological one, in which individual tasks like programming are aided by machines but in which the production process as a whole is not supported. The main body of the book is divided into four Parts. Part I gives a short overview of the ESF project and its ideas, and goes on to attempt to place the ESF work in the context of industry as a whole (with reference to both producers and users of Information Technology systems). Part II sets out to explain the technological basis of the Software Factory as seen by ESF and goes on to describe some experimental and pioneering implementations of Factory Support Environments and their constituents. Part III is devoted to the most complete implementation of an ESF Factory Support Environment to date, Kernel/2r. This Section provides a highly detailed discussion of both design and implementation issues. In Part IV addresses what deployment strategies are now available to continue the spread of these ideas in order to meet the goal of better software-based systems (i.e. systems which are safer, more economical to build, more easily changed and more useful than those that have been built up to now). Finally, a Glossary of Terms and a list of References is given. Readers: those who have a professional interest in Information Technology.