Software testing research: foundations, key problems and future directions

In this seminar, I will first summarize the foundations of software testing by examining the test factors and the relations between test factors in a functional model of software testing. In such a model, I will identify two key problems that affect the effectiveness of testing: the oracle problem and the test generation problem. Then, I will present some recent results obtained on both research fronts. For what concerns the oracle problem, I will describe an approach for oracle improvement and I will justify its effectiveness with information theoretic arguments. For what concerns the test generation problem, I will present MOSA and its recent extension DynaMOSA, a multi objective test case generation algorithm for object oriented programs implemented within the EvoSuite platform. DynaMOSA has been shown to outperform all other test generation engines available in EvoSuite. I will conclude my talk with my vision on the most promising research directions in the area of software testing.

Paolo Tonella is head of the Software Engineering Research Unit at Fondazione Bruno Kessler, in Trento, Italy.  He is also Honorary Professor at University College London. He received his PhD degree in Software Engineering from the University of Padova, in 1999, with the thesis “Code Analysis in Support to Software Maintenance”. In 2011 he was awarded the ICSE 2001 MIP (Most Influential Paper) award, for his paper: “Analysis and Testing of Web Applications”. He is the author of the comprehensive book “Reverse Engineering of Object Oriented Code", Springer, 2005, and of the seminal and widely cited paper “Evolutionary Testing of Classes”, ISSTA 2004. Paolo Tonella was Program Chair of ICSM 2011 and ICPC 2007; General Chair of ISSTA 2010 and ICSM 2012. He is associate editor of TOSEM, he is in the editorial board of EMSE and JSEP, and he was associate editor of TSE until 2017. His current research interests include code analysis, web testing, search based test case generation and the test oracle problem.