[12-10]Testing Concurrent Java Components

Date:2007-12-27

Title: Testing Concurrent Java Components
Speaker: Paul Strooper
School of ITEE
The University of Queensland
pstroop@itee.uq.edu.au

Time:  9:30am, Monday Dec. 10
Venue: Lecture room, Lab for Computer Science, Level 3 Building #5, Institute of Software, CAS

Abstract

Testing concurrent software is notoriously difficult due to problems
with non-determinism and synchronisation.  While tools and techniques
for the testing of sequential components are well-understood and widely
used, similar tools and techniques for concurrent components are not
commonly available. This presentation will look at the problems associated
with testing concurrent components and propose techniques for dealing
with these problems.  Tool support is offered through ConAn (Concurrency
Analyser), a tool for generating test drivers for unit testing Java
classes that are used in a multithreaded context.  To obtain adequate
controllability over the interactions between Java threads, the generated
driver contains threads that are synchronized by a clock.  The driver
automatically executes the calls in a test sequence in the prescribed
order and compares the outputs against the expected outputs specified
in the test sequence.  The limitations of the techniques and ConAn will
be discussed, and additional V&V tools and techniques to address these
limitations will be presented.

Biography

Dr Paul Strooper is a Professor in the School of IT&EE at The University
of Queensland.  He received the BMath and MMath degrees in Computer Science
from the University of Waterloo, and the PhD degree in Computer Science
in 1990 from the University of Victoria.  His main research interest is
Software Engineering, especially software specification, verification,
and testing. He has had substantial interaction with industry through
collaborative research projects, training and consultation in the area
of software V&V.  He was one of the program co-chairs for the 2002
Asia-Pacific Software Engineering Conference (APSEC) and the program chair
for the 2004 and 2005 Australian Software Engineering Conferences (ASWEC).
He is currently the Chair of the Steering Committee for ASWEC, a member of
the Steering Committee for APSEC, and a member of the editorial board of
the Journal of Software Testing, Verification and Reliability.