Software Testing 2008-09: Provisional Schedule of Course Activities

The final schedule will be available by mid-January 2009. The course comprises 16 lectures linked to readings and the course text. The lecture series will finish on Friday, 6th March, in order to leave the last three weeks free for reflection, review, exam revision and practical feedback.

Slides may be updated, and handouts will be provided in lectures and tutorials, so please don't treat any of the handouts below as “final” until after a lecture is over, or you may end up with the wrong material!

Software Testing 2008-09: Provisional Schedule of Course Activities

Wk	Date	Lecture Topic	Reading	Tutorial	Coursework
1	Tue 13th Jan	Overview: Why test?, Terminology Lecture 1 (6 slides per page) Lecture 1 (1 slide per page)	Chapters 1 (“Software Test and Analysis in a Nutshell”) and 2 (“A Framework for Test and Analysis”) of Pezzè and Young. Whittaker's What is Software Testing? And Why is it so Hard? provides a gentle introduction to the area.
1	Fri 16th Jan	Unit test — Tools Lecture 2 (6 slides per page) Lecture 2 (1 slide per page)	JUnit Test Infected is an introduction to JUnit. An O'Reilly article on using JUnit with Eclipse An NCSU Open Lab article on using JUnit with Eclipse
2	Tue 20th Jan	Testing in the Lifecycle Lecture 3 (6 slides per page) Lecture 3 (1 slide per page)	Kapfhammer's chapter on Software Testing provides a more detailed survey of the area. Harold's Testing: a roadmap provides a good overview of recent research directions in testing. Chapters 4 (“Test and Analysis Activities within a Software Process”) and 20 (“Planning and Monitoring the Process”) of P&Y.	The first tutorial is just to make sure everyone's up to speed with JUnit and Eclipse.	Practical 1 issued on Monday 19th January.
2	Fri 23rd Jan	Lecture cancelled			Practical 1 issued on Monday 19th January.
3	Tue 27th Jan	Specification-based testing 1 Lecture 4 (6 slides per page) Lecture 4 (1 slide per page)	Chapter 10 (“Functional Testing”) of P&Y. Ostrand and Balcer's classic paper on The category-partition method for specifying and generating functional tests.	The second tutorial is focused on getting a good understanding of the practical.
3	Fri 30th Jan	Specification-based testing 2 Lecture 5 (6 slides per page) Lecture 5 (1 slide per page) Category-partition testing “cat” (6 slides per page) Category-partition testing “cat” (1 slide per page)	P&Y chapter 11 (“Combinatorial Testing”). P&Y chapter 5 (“Finite Models”). P&Y chapter 14 (“Model-Based Testing”). Harel on Statecharts. Rushby on model checking.
4	Tue 3rd Feb	Structural Testing Lecture 6 (6 slides per page) Lecture 6 (1 slide per page) Lecture 6 coverage quiz sheet (two slides from main set)	P&Y chapter 12 (“Structural Testing”). Zhu et al.'s survey of unit test coverage.	Tutorial 3 is a run-through of category-partition testing using an example from P&Y.	Practical 2 issued on Monday 2nd February.
4	Fri 6th Feb	Data Flow Coverage 1 Lecture 7 (6 slides per page) Lecture 7 (1 slide per page)	P&Y chapters 6 (“Dependence and Data Flow Models”) and 13 (“Data Flow Testing”). Frankl & Weyuker's paper on data flow testing criteria.		Practical 2 issued on Monday 2nd February.
5	Tue 10th Feb	Data Flow Coverage 2 Lecture 8 (6 slides per page) Lecture 8 (1 slide per page) Lecture 8 coverage quiz sheet (four slides from main set)	Chapter 9 (“Test Case Selection and Adequacy”) of P&Y discusses a significant thread of this lecture. Clarke et al.'s Formal Evaluation of Data Flow Path Selection Criteria Clarke et al.'s Comparison of Data Flow Path Selection Criteria (!) Ntafos' Comparison of Some Structural Testing Strategies Rapps & Weyuker's Data Flow Analysis Techniques for Test Data Selection	Tutorial 4 is on statement, branch and basic condition adequacy criteria.	Practical 1 deadline at 12:00 midday on Tuesday of this week (11th February — note 24h postponement).
5	Fri 13th Feb	Mutation Testing Lecture 9 (6 slides per page) Lecture 9 (1 slide per page) Lecture 9 quiz discussion	Chapter 16 (“Fault-Based Testing”) of P&Y. Ma et al.'s MuJava: an automated class mutation system Offutt et al.'s An experimental determination of sufficient mutant operators
6	Tue 17th Feb	Integration Testing Lecture 10 (6 slides per page) Lecture 10 (1 slide per page)	Chapter 21 (“Integration and Component-based Software Testing”) and the beginning of chapter 15 (“Testing Object-Oriented Software”) of P&Y. Lutz, Analyzing Software Requirements Errors in Safety-Critical, Embedded Systems Offutt et al., An analysis tool for coupling-based integration testing	Tutorial 5 is on data flow based adequacy criteria.
6	Fri 20th Feb	Integration Testing, continued Continuing with Tuesday's slides.		Tutorial 5 is on data flow based adequacy criteria.
7	Tue 24th Feb	Regression Testing Lecture 11 (6 slides per page) Lecture 11 (1 slide per page)	Chapter 22 (“System, Acceptance, and Regression Testing”) of P&Y.	Tutorial 6 is on mutation testing.
7	Fri 27th Feb	GUI Testing Lecture 12 (6 slides per page) Lecture 12 (1 slide per page)	Joseph Bergin's article on XP Testing a GUI with FIT, Fitnesse, and Abbot. The Abbot Java GUI Test Framework. Memon et al., Coverage criteria for GUI testing. GUI Testing Checklist.	Tutorial 6 is on mutation testing.
8	Tue 3rd Mar	System Testing Lecture 13 (6 slides per page) Lecture 13 (1 slide per page)	Chapter 22 (“System, Acceptance, and Regression Testing”) of P&Y.	Tutorial 7 is on integration testing.
8	Fri 6th Mar	Higher-Order Testing Lecture 14 (6 slides per page) Lecture 14 (1 slide per page)	These slides overlap the System Testing material somewhat.	Tutorial 7 is on integration testing.
9	Tue 10th Mar	No lecture (Conrad not available)			Practical 2 deadline at 12:00 midday on Friday of this week (13th March).
9	Fri 13th Mar	No lecture (Conrad not available)
10	Tue 17th Mar	Revision session: data flow based coverage Question sheet Sample solutions
10	Fri 20th Mar	Wrap-up Course review slides
11	Tue 24th Mar	Revision session: category-partition method Question sheet Solution outlines
11	Fri 27th Mar	Revision Session To Be Confirmed

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Version 1.13, 2009/03/23 18:52:31

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