2016-An environment for training computer science students on software testing_01611937.pdfVIP

Session T3E An Environment for Training Computer Science Students on Software Testing Jim Collofello and Kalpana Vehathiri Department of Computer Science and Engineering, Arizona State University Tempe, Arizona 85287 collofello@asu.edu kalp@asu.edu Abstract - Software testing is essential to ensure software Software testing is a time-honored approach for quality. On most software projects testing activities evaluating the software in terms of correctness, robustness, consume at least 30 percent of the project effort. On safety efficiency, functionality, and ease of use. The two crucial critical applications, software testing can consume between questions about software correctness are: a what exactly is 50 to 80 percent of project effort. There is a vast amount the software supposed to do? and b is it doing exactly what it of information available on software testing techniques is supposed to do? The former is performed by the verification and tools and some universities offer software testing step of testing and the latter is performed by the validation courses at the advanced undergraduate and graduate level. step of testing [7]. Correctness is relative to a specification. Software testing must also be stressed in beginning courses Specification based testing performs the task of checking the and even in the high schools when students are first code for correctness [8], [11]. The concept is to develop test learning to program. It is also important in these early cases to check if the responsibilities stated in the specification, years to instill a respect for software testing and some the preconditions and the postconditions, are being fulfilled by interest in possible testing careers. This paper describes a the designed code. Other approaches to check correctness ar