Foundational Papers in Software Testing

(Most IEEE/ACM publications listed below may be obtained by visiting IEEE Explore.)

The following four papers lay down the foundations of software testing. All journals mentioned here are available in the Math/Science library and via the IEEE Digital Library accessible to all students and faculty at Purdue.

• J. B. Goodenough and S. L. Gerhart, Toward a theory of test data selection, IEEE Transactions on Software Engineering, 1975, Volume 1, Number 2, pages 156-173.
• R. A. DeMillo, R. J. Lipton, and F. G. Sayward, Hints on test data selection, IEEE Computer, Volume 11, Number 4, 1978, April, pages 34-41.
• R. A. DeMillo, R. J. Lipton, and A. J. Perlis, Social processes and proofs of theorems and programs, POPL '77: Proceedings of the 4th ACM SIGACT-SIGPLAN symposium on Principles of programming languages, 1977, pages 206-214, Los Angeles, California.
• W. E. Howden, Reliability of the path testing analysis strategy. IEEE Transactions on Software Engineering, Vol SE-2, No. 3, September 1976, pages 208-215.

Try answering the following questions after you have completed reading a research publication:

1. What problem is addressed ? Any hypothesis?
2. What is the underlying motivation?
3. What method was employed to address the problem? Analytical? Empirical? Mixed?
4. What solution has been obtained? Is the solution general or applies only to the case study that is reported? If there is an hypothesis, was it rejected? Accepted?
5. What conclusions has the author arrived at?

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Addiional suggested Readings

@inproceedings{belli-fsm-gui,
author = {F. Belli},
title = {Finite state testing and analysis of graphical user interfaces},
booktitle = {ISSRE 2001: Proceedings of the 12th International Symposium on Software Reliability Engineering},
year = {2001},
pages = {34-43},
publisher = {IEEE Computer Society},
}

@phdthesis{bogdanov-thesis,
author = "K. Bogdanov",
title = "Automated {T}esting of {H}arel's {S}tatecharts",
school = "University of Sheffield",
year="2000",
month="January"
}

@phdthesis{burton-thesis,
author = "S. Burton",
title = "Automated {G}eneration of {H}igh {I}ntegrity {T}est {S}uits from {G}raphical {S}pecifications",
school = "University of York",
year="2002",
month="March"
}

@article{chow,
author = {T. S. Chow},
title ={"{T}esting {S}oftware {D}esign {M}odelled by {F}inite {S}tate {M}achines"},
journal={IEEE Transactions on Software Engineering},
pages={178--187},
month={May},
volume={SE-4},
Number={3},
Year={1978}
}

@inproceedings{clarke-lee97,
author = "D. Clarke and I. Lee",
title = "Automatic Generation of Tests for Timing Constraints from Requirements",
booktitle = "Proceedings of the Third International Workshop on Object-Oriented Real-Time Dependable Systems, {Newport Beach, California}",
year = "1997"
}

@phdthesis{clarke-thesis,
author = "D. Clarke",
title = "Testing real-time constraints",
school = "University of Pennsylvania, MS-CIS-96-33",
year="1996"
}

@article{ennouaary-dssouli-khendek-2002,
author = "A. En-Nouaary and R. Dssouli and F. Khendek",
title = "Timed Wp method: testing real-time systems",
journal = "IEEE Transactions on Software Engineering",
volume = "28",
number = "11",
month="November",
pages = "1023-1038",
year = "2002"
}

@article{fujiwara-bochmann,
author = {S. Fujiwara and G. v. Bochmann and F. Khendek and M. Amalou and A. Ghedamsi},
title ={Test selection based on finite state models},
journal={IEEE Transactions on Software Engineering},
pages={591-603},
month={June},
volume={17},
Number={6},
Year={1991}
}

@article{harel-statecharts,
author = {D. Harel},
title = {A {V}isual {F}ormalism for {C}omplex {S}ystems},
journal = {Science of Programming},
volume = {8},
year = {1987},
pages = {231-274}
}

@article{mandrioli-morasca-morzenti,
author = "D. Mandrioli and S. Morasca and A. Morzenti",
title = "Generating test cases from real-time systems from logic specifications",
journal = "ACM Transactions on Computer Systems ",
volume = "13",
pages = "365-368",
number=4,
year = "1995"
}

@inproceedings{rayadurgam-heimdahl,
author = {S. Rayadurgam and M. P. E. S. Heimdahl},
title = "Test {S}equence {G}eneration from {F}ormal {R}equirement {M}odels",
booktitle = {Proceedings Sixth IEEE International Symposium on High Assurance Systems},
pages = {23 - 31},
month="October",
publisher = {IEEE Computer Society Press},
year = "2001"
}

@inproceedings{singh-conrad-sadeghipour,
author={H. Singh, M. Conrad and S. Sadeghipour},
title={Test case design based on Z and the classification-tree method},
booktitle={Proceedings First IEEE International Conference Conference on Formal Engineering Methods},
pages={81-90}
year={1997}
}

@inproceedings{white-almezen,
author = {L. White and H.Almezen},
title = {Generating Test Cases for {GUI} Responsibilities Using Complete Interaction Sequences},
booktitle = {ISSRE '00: Proceedings of the 11th International Symposium on Software Reliability Engineering },
year = {2000},
pages = {110-121},
publisher = {IEEE Computer Society},
}

@inproceedings{white-almezen-alzeidi,
author = {L. White and H. Almezen and N. Alzeidi},
title = {User-based testing of {GUI} sequences and their interactions},
booktitle = {Proceedings of the International Conference on Software Maintenance },
month={November},
year = {2001},
pages = {54-63},
publisher = {IEEE Computer Society},
}

@inproceedings{white-almezen-sastry,
author = {L. White and H. Almezen and S. Sastry},
title = {Firewall regression testing of {GUI} sequences and their interactions},
booktitle = {Proceedings of the International Conference on Software Maintenance },
year = {2003},
month={September},
pages = {398-409},
publisher = {IEEE Computer Society},
}