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Keynotes
Speakers
Head of the Software Engineering Laboratory
ISTI-CNR, Pisa
Keynote title: A guided tour of four decades of a software testing discipline
Abstract:
Testing constitutes not only an essential activity of any software development process, but also an attractive and challenging research discipline. Since its origins in the early 70’s, many questions have intrigued researchers from academia and industry. Some questions involve abstract mathematical problems, towards the goal of building a “universal” test theory within which all notions and techniques of the discipline can fit and find a foundation. Researchers have speculated which is an ideal test suite, or how to compare different test techniques, or what conclusions can justifiably be inferred from the observed test results. Other research questions concerned aspects of a more technical nature, for instance how can we push automation to the highest degree, or how can test cases re-execution be reduced after the software has been modified, or how the activity should be logged and documented. The distinction between theoretical and applicative questions is actually only artificial, as in some (most?) cases the research involves at the same level both natures: for instance, how can testing be performed in compositional way, or how can we implement a reliable test oracle, or how can we objectively measure the effectiveness of a test suite. These and similar questions clearly involve to tackle both formal and practical aspects. In the four decades that have almost passed since the very first works on the topic, software testing has matured to a complex discipline, with an established body of knowledge [2], many standards and several internationally recognized schemes for certifying software tester professionals. In such framework, my viewpoint is inclined towards the research side. Software testing as a research topic has grown from a minor, hardly interesting subject for academics to a major essential player of any application domain and any scientific event of the software engineering area. The research has forked along many routes and within different communities. In this talk, I will walkthrough “foreign visitors” of the discipline along such routes, stopping at some more prominent results and appealing ongoing researches. The tour has no intent of making a comprehensive survey of the discipline, which would be not only beyond one only person’s expertise, but also impossible to cover in one hour talk. As is the case for any tour, in my role of guide I will make a subjective sampling. A tour guide (citation from Wikipedia) leads groups of tourists around a venue, providing a commentary on the features and history of the location. The content of the tour is thus determined by the guide’s knowledge of local stories, history and culture, and it will not be different in our tour of the software testing discipline. We will start from the characterization of software testing through the understanding of its basic constituent notions. We will then overview how approaches and tools for testing have evolved from simple capture&replay or coverage-based techniques into sophisticated strategies, which include computationally-intensive search-based approaches, or combined alternations of random and systematic test selections. We will also touch upon challenges posed by the modern shift towards service-centric computing, and by its flexibility and openness tenets. As a reference for further reading, I will finally just outline the roadmap for the future of software testing research (from my FOSE talk [1] at ICSE 2007), in which I have organized the many outstanding research challenges for software testing into a consistent roadmap.
References
[1] A. Bertolino. Software testing research: Achievements, challenges, dreams. In FOSE ’07: 2007 Future of Software Engineering, pages 85–103,Washington, DC, USA, 2007. IEEE Computer Society.
[2] A. Bertolino and E. Marchetti. Software testing (chapt.5). In P. Bourque and R. Dupuis, editors, Guide to the Software Engineering Body of Knowledge SWEBOK, 2004 Version, pages 5–1–5–16. IEEE Computer Society, 2004. http://www.swebok.org.
Fraunhofer Institute for Experimental Software Engineering
Division “Quality Management”, Division Manager
Keynote title: Software Process Improvements: Opportunities & Risks
Abstract:
Software has become the enabler for business success in many sectors of industry. Examples range from automotive and aero-space industry to financial industry and administration. The state-of-the-practice development processes lack behind these challenges significantly. Activities to improve software processes are necessary, and bear a huge business potential. However, improvement today is mostly based on standard models such as CMMI or SPICE. The question is whether such approaches alone promise the quickest gains and most sustained successes.
This presentation addresses the essentials of process improvement such as measurement and explicit modelling of core competencies. It then suggests a quick ROI path towards improvement based on a combination of standard-based and goal-based approaches. Especially the need for business alignment and goal-oriented measurement will be motivated.
Examples from work at Fraunhofer IESE as well as the author’s involvement in the development of the GQM+Strategies approach for aligning business strategies with software measurement will be used to illustrate sound principles of process improvement.
Professor, Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, CyLab and Department of Computer Science
Director, Real-time and Multimedia Systems Laboratory
Co-Director, General Motors-CMU Collaborative Research Laboratory Carnegie Mellon University
Keynote title: Automotive Cyber-Physical Systems: Challenges and Opportunities
Abstract:
Cyber-physical systems comprise of computational and communication components monitoring, controlling or interacting with physical components. Application domains for these systems range from aerospace, transportation, factory automation, process control, robotics, medicine and health-care, and energy generation, distribution and management. In this talk, we will first outline grand challenges and research goals for the next generation of cyber-physical systems. The bulk of the talk will then focus on exciting opportunities for enhancing safety, comfort, convenience and even autonomy in future automotive cyber-physical systems. These opportunities range from vehicular networks offering real-time traffic information to autonomous vehicles that serve as virtual chauffeurs. Prof. Rajkumar's observations will partly be based as the Co-Director for the General Motors-Carnegie Mellon University Collaborative Research Lab and as the Lead for the Systems Engineering Group of CMU's winning entry into the 2008 DARPA Grand Challenge
University of Kaiserlautern, Germany
Keynote title: Von-Neumann-centric Computing: unaffordable soon?
Abstract:
With respect to the affordability of our entire computing ecosystem we have to take into account 3 different key issues. Faster than predicted years ago, we see the dramatic impact of climate change almost everywhere. A key factor seems to be carbon emission, primarily from power plants, so that we should reduce the number of plants required. Another important issue is the high cost of energy. A study [Mark. P. Mills] estimates that almost 30% of all electricity consumed in the US goes into all kinds of computers, visible or embedded, and might go up to 50% some years later. The upward trend of the crude oil price (having reached 164 dollars by July 2008) reminds us, that the operating cost of our entire computing ecosystem might become unaffordable within a few years: another reason for trying to reduce the number of power plants needed. Again another important issue is the strategic change of the microprocessor industry by stopping the GHz race, kicking off the manycore programming crisis which threatens to stall further progress to affordable higher performance computing: „from growth industry to replacement industry“, [Dave Patterson]: „Methods for supporting manycore could reset microprocessor hardware and software roadmaps for the next 30 years.” A fully von-Neumann-based approach can never be the solution to cope with the many- core programming crisis, nor with the growing energy cost. Low Power IC design techniques will play a role in this situation. However, methods to cope with the von Neumann syndrome by software to configware migration promise a drastically better reduction in power consumption and promise speed-ups to drastically higher performance – both promises by up to several orders of magnitude. Because of the enormous burden by legacy software, reminding me to our current mortgage crisis, we cannot fully switch quickly to a disruptive paradigm shift. We need a twin paradigm approach, based on computing wisdom mostly having been ignored by our curricula for decades - except by the scenes of Reconfigurable Computing offering the highly promising twin brother of the von Neumann paradigm. The talk illustrates, why this approach has a drastically higher potential to solve the problems mentioned above, and proposes related models to cope with our CS education dilemma. This whistle blowing talk calls for a run-away computing revolution causing a quick and strong educational impact as known from the VLSI design revolution a la Mead & Conway. We all must stick together to avoid a disaster of historic dimensions.