[12-8]Test Generation with Grammars and Covering Arrays
Date:2008-12-04
Title：Test Generation with Grammars and Covering Arrays
Speaker：Prof. Paul Strooper
Affiliation: School of ITEE, The University of Queensland, Australia
pstroop@itee.uq.edu.au
Time：2:00pm, Dec. 8
Venue: Lecture room, Lab for Computer Science, Level 3 Building #5
Abstract：
Grammars and covering arrays have seen extensive use in test generation. A covering-array algorithm takes a list of domains and generates a subset of the cartesian product of the domains. A grammar-based test generation (GBTG) algorithm takes a grammar G and generates a subset of the language accepted by G. Covering arrays and GBTG are usually applied independently. We show that grammar rules and covering array specifications can be freely intermixed, with precise, intuitive and efficient generation. The potential benefits for automated test generation are significant. We present an approach for "tagging" grammars with specifications for mixed-strength covering arrays, a generalisation of conventional covering arrays. We will demonstrate a prototype tool for generating test cases from tagged grammars.
About the speaker：
Paul Strooper is a Professor in the School of ITEE 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 verification and validation. He was one of the program co-chairs for the 2002 Asia-Pacific Software Engineering Conference (APSEC), the program chair for the 2004 and 2005 Australian Software Engineering Conferences (ASWEC), and is the general chair for ASWEC 2009. He is a member of the editorial board of the IEEE Transactions on Software Engineering, the Journal of Software Testing, Verification and Reliability, and a member of the Steering Committees for the APSEC and ASWEC conferences.