Mat Ashidi’s research while affiliated with University of Science Malaysia and other places

Covering as much as 40 to 50 percent of the development costs and resources, software testing is an integral part of the software development lifecycle. Despite its importance, current software testing practice lacks automation and is still primarily based on highly manual processes from the generation of test cases (i.e. from the specifications documents) up to the actual execution of the test. These manually generated tests are sometimes executed using ad hoc approach, typically requiring the construction of a test driver for the particular application under test. The construction of a test driver is tedious, error prone, and cumbersome process, as it puts extra burden to test engineers. In addition, test engineers are also under pressure to test increasing lines of code in order to meet market demands and deadlines for more software functionalities. To attain the required level of quality and maintain acceptable test coverage, test engineers need to consider a significantly large number of test cases. Many combinations of possible input parameters, hardware/software environments, and system conditions need to be tested and verified against for conformance based on the system's specification. Often, this results into combinatorial explosion of test cases. Addressing some of the aforementioned issues, this paper describes a new automated and combinatorial software testing tool, called JTst, based on the use of Java technology. The main novel features of JTst are the fact that it permits combinatorial test data generation and automated concurrent execution, enabling higher product quality at lower testing costs.

Software testing relates to the process of executing a program or system with the intent of finding errors. Covering as much as 40 to 50 percent of the development costs and resources, software testing is an integral part of the software development lifecycle. Despite its importance, current software testing practice lacks automation and is still primarily based on highly manual processes from the generation of test cases (i.e. from the specifications documents) up to the actual execution of the test. Although the emergence of helpful automated testing tools in the market is blooming, their adoptions are lacking as they do not adequately provide the right level of abstraction and automation required by test engineers. JTst is a Java based automated unit testing tool that addresses some of the aforementioned issues. The main novel features of JTst are the fact that it permits combinatorial test case generations as well as automated and concurrent execution of test cases for Java classes, enabling higher product quality at lower testing costs.

Process Modeling Languages (PMLs) are languages used to express software process models. Process Centered Software Engineering Environments (PSEEs) are the environments used to define, modify, analyse, and enact a process model. While both PMLs and PSEEs are equally important, it is the characteristics of PMLs that are the focus of this article. Over the past 15 years, there have been many PMLs (and PSEEs) developed. Despite many potential advances, the use of PMLs in industry has not been widespread. As PMLs could form a vital feature for future software engineering environments, it is useful to reflect on the current achievements and shortcomings, and to identify potential areas of omission. It is also useful to explore issues emerging from related research areas, the adoption of which could improve the applicability and acceptance of PMLs. Given such potential benefits, this paper presents a critical analysis of existing PMLs identifying each language's strong points and weaknesses, thereby forming guidelines for the future design of PMLs.

In line with market demands and the need for technological innovations, designing and implementing software and hardware components for computing systems is growing in complexity. In order to cope with such complexity whilst meeting market needs, engineers often rely on design integration with commercial-of-the-shelf-components (COTs). In the case where lives and fortunes are at stake, there is a need to ensure dependability of COTs in terms of their robustness before they can be adopted in such an environment. However, it is not often possible to thoroughly test COTs for robustness particularly in a real-time embedded system because their design as well as source codes are usually unavailable. In order to address some of the above issues, we have developed an automated software fault injection tool, called SFIT, based on the use of computational reflection and Java technology. This prototype tool is capable of injecting faults in Java COTs in the absence of source code for public, private, and protected methods by using variable types of fault values.