Cem Kaner

Florida Institute of Technology · Department of Computer Sciences & Cybersecurity

Almost all software contracts that are not open-source contain broad bans on reverse engineering, but as far as we can tell, almost all professional software development does reverse engineering to some degree. This is a fundamental, unresolved conflict. Every student and practitioner of software of engineering will face reverse engineering issues...

This talk is largely tutorial in nature, focused on the validity of software-related metrics. We will treat software metrics as human performance measures, ask what makes a measure valid, and answer it with an inventory of many types of validity (construct validity, predictive validity, internal validity, face validity, etc.) We are carrying concep...

Professors spend many hours grading student papers and reviewing scholarly work submitted for publication. In addition to providing constructive, informative, and engaging critiques, professors must be aware of a broader literature to enforce academic standards of attribution and integrity. Adopting the mindset to support plagiarism detection- skep...

At Florida Tech, undergraduate and graduate students take the course "Software Testing 2" to learn Test- Driven Development (TDD) by exploring structural (glass-box) methods in software testing such as unit testing and structural coverage, as well as other agile development methodologies such as refactoring. This paper presents an experience in tea...

Historically, the focus of VV&A research and development has been in the areas of developing new techniques and metrics and developing standards to ensure consistency across a wide range of applications. This work has proven technically beneficial to developers of M&S applications as "how to" guidance for conducting V&V. We all understand that how...

Cultural Historical Activity Theory (CHAT) (Engeström, 1987) is a model that can organize systems-level thinking and analysis. In particular, CHAT focuses on the context in which an activity takes place. Therefore, it is particularly useful for context-driven software analysis. This paper introduces and explains CHAT, illustrates how it can be used...

Plagiarism is a tedious issue in the academic environment. Many students don’t understand why it’s such a big deal. Others don’t care and just gamble on not getting caught. Many don’t understand what it is and find themselves in an unexpected mess. I’ll open this talk with a brief discussion of why plagiarism is an important issue, academically and...

Several tools are marketed to the educational community for plagiarism detection and prevention. This article briefly contrasts the performance of two leading tools, TurnItIn and MyDropBox, in detecting submissions that were obviously plagiarized from articles published in IEEE journals. Both tools performed poorly because they do not compare submi...

Many university classes and commercial training courses rely on classroom lecture and practice exercises to help students learn new skills. The thesis work described in this paper sought to create an optimal set of lecture notes and practice exercises to teach a software testing technique, domain testing. The new materials were successful at teachi...

This report illustrates the use of qualitative methods and an interpretive framework (Cultural Historical Activity Theory) to examine educational interventions. The techniques are applicable to engineering education where researchers seek to investigate questions with rich contexts and compelling examples. The specific study illustrating the use of...

RESUMEN RESUMEN Does the practice of software testing effectively meet industry needs? Five software testing experts give brief answers to a broad question from different points of view.This article is part of a special issue on Software Testing .

We teach a class on programmer testing with a primary focus on test driven development (TDD) as part of the software engineering curriculum at the Florida Institute of Technology. As of this writing, the course has been offered 3 times. Each session contained a mixture of undergraduate and graduate students. This paper discusses the evolution of th...

Citizen/popular initiatives provide a way for the inclusion of constitutional or statutory proposals on the ballot (e.g., at an election) if enough signatures are collected in support of the proposal [1, 2, 3, 4]. Once citizens are enabled to digitally sign such initiatives remotely, the next challenge will be to provide support for verified eligib...

Construct validity is about the question, how we know that we're measuring the attribute that we think we're measuring? This is discussed in formal, theoretical ways in the computing literature (in terms of the representational theory of measurement) but rarely in simpler ways that foster application by practitioners. Construct validity starts with...

We are working with a broad class of testing techniques we collectively call High Volume Test Automation (HVTA). The essence of HVTA techniques is automated execution and evaluation of large numbers of tests, for the purpose of exposing functional errors that are otherwise hard to find. These techniques are not widely used in industry, but we belie...

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Domain testing is a stratified sampling strategy for choosing a few test cases from the near infinity of candidate test cases. The strategy goes under several names, such as equivalence partitioning, boundary analysis, and category partitioning. This paper describes a risk-focused interpretation of domain testing and some results (experiential and...

els, etc.) -- experience reports -- educational publications (such as books that are intended to teach the reader rather than report new findings) -- tutorials -- marketing materials -- product documentation -- news reports of events of interest Examples . The introductory books' descriptions are very general, and the advice they offer is very gene...

Introduction There have been at least 17 studies of the one-way shock avoidance behaviour of hippocampalarea lesioned rats. The question typically focused on is whether the lesioned subjects show a deficit in learning the task, relative to some lesioned or non-lesioned control group. To answer this a single measure---shocks or trials to some criter...

This paper is essentially a progress report. I can't (yet) tell you how to succeed in test automation, but I know more of the pieces of more of the puzzles than I did when we started setting up the first meeting, in 1996. The progress has been uneven, and so is this paper. But I hope that it's useful. Comments and criticisms are welcome. Please sen...

this article, we present an assembly language program, interfaced with Applesoft as the USR function, which provides three independently addressable RNGs. We also present test data which suggest that the RNGs will be suitable for most applications. The RNG Algorithm There are many ways to produce pseudo-random numbers, a few of which work reasonabl...

this paper to describe a nominal scale. Suppose that you had hundreds of different pieces of cloth and you sorted them by color. Here is the brown pile. There is the pink pile. This is the green pile. By sorting, you have nominally (or categorically) scaled the cloths. For those who insist that measurement is the assignment of number to an attribut...

Several companies are careless about the accuracy of their user manuals and online help, leading readers to believe that a product has characteristics that it lacks. Under American law, buyers of goods have a right to expect a manufacturer to stand behind its claims. False claims in documentation might subject the manufacturer to liability for brea...

This tutorial provides materials and supporting discussion for teaching the software testing course. Readers who see this description after CSEE&T 2004 is complete, can find the latest set of course materials at www.testingeducation.org.

This talk sketches the field of software-quality-related liability. I will briefly outline many legal theories under which a maker of defective products or a provider of defective services can be sued. Then I'll focus on three specific issues. (1) Negligence in development or support of software products; (2) Professional negligence in software-rel...

This document is intended as an issues list for negotiating an outsourcing relationship. It is not intended as legal advice. The author makes no promise that this is suitable for your particular project or negotiation. What's this document all about? When lawyers negotiate a contract, they often find it handy to work from a checklist of key issues....

This workshop has grown out of our dissatisfaction with paper-intensive approaches that attempt to provide a seemingly reproducible, somewhat mechanical process for planning and managing testing and test documentation. Over the past 17 years, we have criticized IEEE standard 829 (on software test documentation) and related approaches as being often...

This article is a preliminary report of my attempts to pull together thinking from several disciplines into a more coherent, and I think more practical, approach to software-related measurement. My goal is to help you evaluate measurement schemes that people ask you to use, to help you explain why the bad ones shouldn 't be imposed on your group, a...

This document is intended as an issues list for planning and negotiating an outsourcing relationship. It is not intended as legal advice. The author makes no promise that this is suitable for your particular project or negotiation

This paper describes ways we would go about answering that question

One of the common test management questions is what is the right ratio of testers to other developers. Perhaps a credible benchmark number can provide convenience and bargaining power to the test manager working with an executive who has uninformed ideas about testing or whose objective is to spend the minimum necessary to conform to an industry st...

this paper, we look at one narrow but important issue for digital signatures

Intellectual property, contracts, liability, and trespass are examples of legal issues that may be of interest to anyone involved in creating, managing, or using document artifacts. These legal issues both influence, and are influenced by, design of communication concerns such as content management systems, single sourcing technologies, and writing...

Software publishers and information service providers publish information about their own products and about other products and people. Additional content might be incidental, such as discussion of the practice of accounting in documentation of a bookkeeping program. Or it may relate to a publisher's product, such as papers on the nature of a disea...

The following paper describes the requirements and contraints of testing a web application system for the Austrian Chamber of Commerce. It seperates the testing task into two parts - one for testing the web architecture and one for testing the internet ...

Designing good test cases is a complex art. The complexity comes from three sources: É Test cases help us discover information. Different types of tests are more effective for different classes of information.

Software companies are pushing draconian legislation that would abolish century-old doctrines protecting the rights of users of intellectual property. The author argues that by treating a transaction for software as a license rather than a sale, the Uniform Computer Information Transactions Act would cost us all dearly. UCITA makes enforceable almo...

This paper discusses how an industrial and an academic software engineering education program were developed and improved using the SWEBOK.

The Uniform Computer Information Transactions Act (UCITA) was designed to protect software vendors in their relationships with their customers. The bill is so one-sided that it will cause significant short-term and long-term problems for software customers, small software developers, and small competitors to large publishers, as well as for the sof...

this paper to describe a nominal scale. Suppose that you had hundreds ofdifferent pieces of cloth and you sorted them by color. Here is the brown pile. There isthe pink pile. This is the green pile. By sorting, you have nominally (or categorically)scaled the cloths. For those who insist that measurement is the assignment of number toan attribute ac...

This paper describes ways we would go about answering that question.

ranks (more complaints), of course. Over-hyped . The Canadian government recently completed a study of the claims made on the packaging of consumer software: Incorrect (and "potentially false or misleading") claims were made by 65% of all the software titles tested. . Study by Industry Canada's Competition Bureau. For the full study, go to http://s...

This is a preliminary discussion draft of a chapter that we expect to be controversial in the testing community. Complete references will accompany the next draft. A theory of measurement must take into account at least 8 factors: • The attribute to be measured • The appropriate scale for the attribute • The variation of the attribute • The ins...

According to popular mythology, people with little programming experience can use GUI-level regression test tools to quickly and competently create extensive black box test suites that are easy to maintain. Though some efforts to use these tools have been successful, several have failed miserably. This was the focus of a two-day meeting at which 13...

A new law is being drafted that will govern all contracts for the development, sale, and support of computer software in the United States. This law is being drafted by attorneys and by trade association representatives who don't understand software engineering. The new law, Article 2B, will be a section of the Uniform Commercial Code (UCC). Its sc...

This paper explores three themes:1. I think that I've figured out how to explain the impossibility of complete testing to managersand lawyers, with examples that they can understand. These are my notes.2. A peculiar breed of snake-oil sellers reassure listeners that you achieve complete testing byusing their coverage monitors. Wrong. Complete line...

The role of sensory-affective bias and of two types of experience (simple exposure to an odor and exposure to an odor in association with conspecifics) in the establishment and maintenance of preference of rat pups for odorants was investigated. (a) Simple exposure of pups to a mildly aversive odorant (peppermint extract) from birth to 21 days of a...

Corrects a prevalent misuse of the Kolmogorov-Smirnov test for goodness of fit by providing new critical values for the computational form of the test most often used by psychologists ( Dn maximum). Existing tables for the test assume a different computational form ( Dn supremum). The common use of the Dn-maximum version with the Dn-supremum tabl...

We are adapting a rich collection of Creative Commons academic course materials (video lectures, slides, assessment materials) in a course on Black Box Software Testing (BBST) for a professional audience (Association for Software Testing [AST]). AST's model breaks BBST into learning units, each presented as a 4 week, online course. Students spend 8...

A new law will probably be introduced into state legislatures in the fall of 1999. It will govern all contracts for the development, sale, licensing, and support of computer software, and of most other information-related products. Customers' advocates, such as Ralph Nader, Consumers Union, and the Society for Information Management (which represen...

A new law will probably be introduced into state legislatures in the fall of 1998. It will govern all contracts for the development, sale, licensing, and support of computer software, and of most other information-related products. Customers' advocates, such as Ralph Nader, Consumers Union, and the Society for Information Management (which represen...

Exploratory testing is widely done in software testing. However, it is performed in many different ways. This paper discusses our initial work into examining a tester's learning style as an indication of the types of actions she might use while doing exploratory testing. We use the Felder-Silverman learning styles model as a basis for presenting ou...

this article before July 22, 1999, I urge you to write a letter to themembers of NCCUSL from your State, asking them to oppose UCITA. If you read it inthe July 20-30 timeframe, you can send a letter to me and I will see that it reaches theNCCUSL members from your state. After July 30, send opposition letters to your staterepresentatives

Abstract The law of software quality is a complex area including laws governing crimes, negligence, fraud, deceptive advertising, unfair trade practices, unfair competition, anti - competitive practices, safety regulations, breach of contract, and various other areas Legislators are now focusing more directly on computer - specific and software spe...

Abstract Digital systems have simplied the management, accounting, transfer, and dissemination of all types of information. However, they have not yet been often successfully applied to a very dicult and rewarding task of a democratic administration: facilitating the acquisition, evaluation and renemen t of the ideas and opinions of large bodies of...

The thesis is that the same timing mechanism is available and is used by experienced subjects in a synchronization task whether the intervals involved are relatively long (eg 2000 msec) or short (eg 200 msec) and whether the stimuli are auditory or visual.^ Synchronization involves two main stimuli. One marks the start of a target interval. The sec...

Once upon a time, a software company developed a desktop publishing program for the consumer market. During development, the testers found a bug: in a small zone near the upper right corner, you couldn't paste a graphic. They called this the "postage stamp bug." The programmers decided this wasn't very important. You could work around it by resizin...

Introductory Note: Legislative drafting involves a complex balancing of risks and interests. When we wrote this paper, an effort was underway to rewrite the Uniform Commercial Code (United States) to govern all software related contracts. That revision was rejected by the American Law Institute, one of the two organizations that maintains the UCC (...