An Adaptive Search Budget Allocation Approach for Search-Based Test Case Generation

Search-based techniques have been successfully used to automate test case generation. Such approaches allocate a fixed search budget to generate test cases aiming at maximizing code coverage. The search budget plays a crucial role; due to the hugeness of the search space, the higher the assigned budget, the higher the expected coverage. Code components have different structural properties that may affect the ability of search-based techniques to achieve a high coverage level. Thus, allocating a fixed search budget for all the components is not recommended and a component-specific search budget should be preferred. However, deciding the budget to assign to a given component is not a trivial task. In this article, we introduce Budget Optimization for Testing (BOT), an approach to adaptively allocate the search budget to the classes under test. BOT requires information about the branch coverage that will be achieved on each class with a given search budget. Therefore, we also introduce BRANCHOS, an approach that predicts coverage in a budget-aware way. The results of our experiments show that (i) BRANCHOS can approximate the branch coverage in time with a low error, and (ii) BOT can significantly increase the coverage achieved by a test generation tool and the effectiveness of generated tests.

Software Testing Automation of VR-Based Systems With Haptic Interfaces

As software systems have increased in complexity, manual testing has become harder or even infeasible. In addition, each test phase and application domain may have its idiosyncrasies in relation to testing automation. Techniques and tools to automate test oracles in domains such as graphical user interfaces are available; nevertheless, they are scarce in the virtual reality (VR) realm. We present an approach to automate software testing in VR-based systems with haptic interfaces—interfaces that allow bidirectional communication during human–computer interaction, capturing movements and providing touch feedback. It deals with the complexity and characteristics of haptic interfaces to apply the record and playback technique. Our approach also provides inference rules to identify possible faulty modules of the system under testing. A case study was performed with three systems: a system with primitive virtual objects, a dental anesthesia simulator and a game. Faulty versions of the systems were created by seeding faults manually and by using mutation operators. The results showed that 100% of the manually seeded faults and 93% of mutants were detected. Moreover, the inference rules helped identify the faulty modules of the systems, suggesting that the approach improves the test activity in VR-based systems with haptic interfaces.

Automated test generation for optimizing compilers with OpenMP support

The correctness of the compiler is a necessary requirement for the correct operation of the software compiled by it. Therefore, the most important stage in the development of the compiler is verification. Recent widespread of multi-core processors and graphics core integrated to CPU emphasized the problem of the transition from single-threaded to multi-threaded computing and re-usage of graphics core for general purpose heterogeneous parallel computations in particular. In this paper, we are presenting an approach to automate test creation for the verification of the compiler with OpenMP support, based on a generator that uses grammars to generate syntactically correct executable tests.

Blood Grouping with a Miniature Centrifugal Fast Analyzer

The Centrifugal Fast Analyzer was used to develop a semiautomated, computerized blood-grouping system. A miniaturized version of the Analyzer was used for the development because, essentially, it enables one to automate "test-tube" grouping procedures. The blood-grouping system is discussed in terms of adaptation of blood-grouping procedures; types of instrumentation used for grouping, cell washing, and Coombs testing; parametric optimization of hemagglutination reactions; subgrouping of A and AB; reverse typing; small-scale blood-grouping evaluation of our approach; and computerization of blood grouping. The data reported here indicate that the system reliably provides accurate results.