Cooperative Software Testing and Analysis： Advances and Challenges

• Published in: Journal of computer science and technology 2014-07, Vol.29 (4), p.713-723
• Main Author: 谢涛 张路 肖旭生 熊英飞 郝丹
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: Artificial Intelligence; Computer programs; Computer Science; Cooperation; Data Structures and Information Theory; Human; Information Systems Applications (incl.Internet); Methodology; Software; Software development tools; Software Engineering; Software testing; Survey; Theory of Computation; 分析工具; 协作; 协同; 合作; 现实世界; 用户; 软件分析; 软件测试
• ISSN: 1000-9000; 1860-4749
• DOI: 10.1007/s11390-014-1461-6

In recent years, to maximize the value of software testing and analysis, we have proposed the methodology of cooperative software testing and analysis （in short as cooperative testing and analysis） to enable testing and analysis tools to cooperate with their users （in the form of tool-human cooperation）, and enable one tool to cooperate with another tool （in the form of tool-tool cooperation）. Such cooperations are motivated by the observation that a tool is typically not powerful enough to address complications in testing or analysis of complex real-world software, and the tool user or another tool may be able to help out some problems faced by the tool. To enable tool-human or tool-tool cooperation, effective mechanisms need to be developed 1） for a tool to communicate problems faced by the tool to the tool user or another tool, and 2） for the tool user or another tool to assist the tool to address the problems. Such methodology of cooperative testing and analysis forms a new research frontier on synergistic cooperations between humans and tools along with cooperations between tools and tools. This article presents recent example advances and challenges on cooperative testing and analysis.