Building an open-source system test generation tool: lessons learned and empirical analyses with EvoMaster

Research in software testing often involves the development of software prototypes. Like any piece of software, there are challenges in the development, use and verification of such tools. However, some challenges are rather specific to this problem domain. For example, often these tools are developed by PhD students straight out of bachelor/master degrees, possibly lacking any industrial experience in software development. Prototype tools are used to carry out empirical studies, possibly studying different parameters of novel designed algorithms. Software scaffolding is needed to run large sets of experiments efficiently. Furthermore, when using AI-based techniques like evolutionary algorithms, care needs to be taken to deal with their randomness, which further complicates their verification. The aforementioned represent some of the challenges we have identified for this domain. In this paper, we report on our experience in building the open-source EvoMaster tool, which aims at system-level test case generation for enterprise applications. Many of the challenges we faced would be common to any researcher needing to build software testing tool prototypes. Therefore, one goal is that our shared experience here will boost the research community, by providing concrete solutions to many development challenges in the building of such kind of research prototypes. Ultimately, this will lead to increase the impact of scientific research on industrial practice.publishedVersio

Scoping a vision for formative e-assessment: a project report for JISC

Assessment is an integral part of teaching and learning. If the relationship between teaching and learning were causal, i. e. if students always mastered the intended learning outcomes of a particular sequence of instruction, assessment would be superfluous. Experience and research suggest this is not the case: what is learnt can often be quite different from what is taught. Formative assessment is motivated by a concern with the elicitation of relevant information about student understanding and / or achievement, its interpretation and an exploration of how it can lead to actions that result in better learning. In the context of a policy drive towards technology-enhanced approaches to teaching and learning, the question of the role of digital technologies is key and it is the latter on which this project particularly focuses. The project and its deliverables have been informed by recent and relevant literature, in particular recent work by Black andIn this work, they put forward a framework which suggests that assessment for learning their term for formative assessment can be conceptualised as consisting of a number of aspects and five keystrategies. The key aspects revolve around the where the learner is going, where the learner is right now and how she can get there and examines the role played by the teacher, peers and the learner. Language: English Keywords: assessments, case studies, design patterns, e-assessmen

Summary of the First Workshop on Sustainable Software for Science: Practice and Experiences (WSSSPE1)

Challenges related to development, deployment, and maintenance of reusable software for science are becoming a growing concern. Many scientists’ research increasingly depends on the quality and availability of software upon which their works are built. To highlight some of these issues and share experiences, the First Workshop on Sustainable Software for Science: Practice and Experiences (WSSSPE1) was held in November 2013 in conjunction with the SC13 Conference. The workshop featured keynote presentations and a large number (54) of solicited extended abstracts that were grouped into three themes and presented via panels. A set of collaborative notes of the presentations and discussion was taken during the workshop. Unique perspectives were captured about issues such as comprehensive documentation, development and deployment practices, software licenses and career paths for developers. Attribution systems that account for evidence of software contribution and impact were also discussed. These include mechanisms such as Digital Object Identifiers, publication of “software papers”, and the use of online systems, for example source code repositories like GitHub. This paper summarizes the issues and shared experiences that were discussed, including cross-cutting issues and use cases. It joins a nascent literature seeking to understand what drives software work in science, and how it is impacted by the reward systems of science. These incentives can determine the extent to which developers are motivated to build software for the long-term, for the use of others, and whether to work collaboratively or separately. It also explores community building, leadership, and dynamics in relation to successful scientific software

Software Testing Techniques and Tools: A Review

The software development process is closely related to the creation and evaluation processes. The problem with this software development is that it often lacks testing which leads to software failures. In order To maintain a high quality product in excellent performance condition, testing becomes critical. The software can be tested by using White Box, Black-Box, or Gray testing techniques. In this investigation, the types of tests were reviewed. Performing Testing with White Box Testing uses a number of testing methodologies based on path testing, including the production of flowcharts, cyclomatic complexity assessment, and independent path testing. As a result, it is possible to implement a foundation path testing technique and white box approach to testing. This review included several axes, namely the definition of white box testing tools, then the testing techniques in general, the benefits and gains of each of these technologies, the levels of testing, and finally the steps of conducting the test. This review then came to several conclusions that are mentioned at the end of this paper

Spellburst: A Node-based Interface for Exploratory Creative Coding with Natural Language Prompts

Creative coding tasks are often exploratory in nature. When producing digital artwork, artists usually begin with a high-level semantic construct such as a "stained glass filter" and programmatically implement it by varying code parameters such as shape, color, lines, and opacity to produce visually appealing results. Based on interviews with artists, it can be effortful to translate semantic constructs to program syntax, and current programming tools don't lend well to rapid creative exploration. To address these challenges, we introduce Spellburst, a large language model (LLM) powered creative-coding environment. Spellburst provides (1) a node-based interface that allows artists to create generative art and explore variations through branching and merging operations, (2) expressive prompt-based interactions to engage in semantic programming, and (3) dynamic prompt-driven interfaces and direct code editing to seamlessly switch between semantic and syntactic exploration. Our evaluation with artists demonstrates Spellburst's potential to enhance creative coding practices and inform the design of computational creativity tools that bridge semantic and syntactic spaces

Visual approaches to knowledge organization and contextual exploration

This thesis explores possible visual approaches for the representation of semantic structures, such as zz-structures. Some holistic visual representations of complex domains have been investigated through the proposal of new views - the so-called zz-views - that allow both to make visible the interconnections between elements and to support a contextual and multilevel exploration of knowledge. The potential of this approach has been examined in the context of two case studies that have led to the creation of two Web applications. The \ufb01rst domain of study regarded the visual representation, analysis and management of scienti\ufb01c bibliographies. In this context, we modeled a Web application, we called VisualBib, to support researchers in building, re\ufb01ning, analyzing and sharing bibliographies. We adopted a multi-faceted approach integrating features that are typical of three di\ufb00erent classes of tools: bibliography visual analysis systems, bibliographic citation indexes and personal research assistants. The evaluation studies carried out on a \ufb01rst prototype highlighted the positive impact of our visual model and encouraged us to improve it and develop further visual analysis features we incorporated in the version 3.0 of the application. The second case study concerned the modeling and development of a multimedia catalog of Web and mobile applications. The objective was to provide an overview of a significant number of tools that can help teachers in the implementation of active learning approaches supported by technology and in the design of Teaching and Learning Activities (TLAs). We analyzed and documented 281 applications, preparing for each of them a detailed multilingual card and a video-presentation, organizing all the material in an original purpose-based taxonomy, visually represented through a browsable holistic view. The catalog, we called AppInventory, provides contextual exploration mechanisms based on zz-structures, collects user contributions and evaluations about the apps and o\ufb00ers visual analysis tools for the comparison of the applications data and user evaluations. The results of two user studies carried out on groups of teachers and students shown a very positive impact of our proposal in term of graphical layout, semantic structure, navigation mechanisms and usability, also in comparison with two similar catalogs

A study of novice programmer performance and programming pedagogy.

Identifying and mitigating the difficulties experienced by novice programmers is an active area of research that has embraced a number of research areas. The aim of this research was to perform a holistic study into the causes of poor performance in novice programmers and to develop teaching approaches to mitigate them. A grounded action methodology was adopted to enable the primary concepts of programming cognitive psychology and their relationships to be established, in a systematic and formal manner. To further investigate novice programmer behaviour, two sub-studies were conducted into programming performance and ability. The first sub-study was a novel application of the FP-Tree algorithm to determine if novice programmers demonstrated predictable patterns of behaviour. This was the first study to data mine programming behavioural characteristics rather than the learner’s background information such as age and gender. Using the algorithm, patterns of behaviour were generated and associated with the students’ ability. No patterns of behaviour were identified and it was not possible to predict student results using this method. This suggests that novice programmers demonstrate no set patterns of programming behaviour that can be used determine their ability, although problem solving was found to be an important characteristic. Therefore, there was no evidence that performance could be improved by adopting pedagogies to promote simple changes in programming behaviour beyond the provision of specific problem solving instruction. A second sub-study was conducted using Raven’s Matrices which determined that cognitive psychology, specifically working memory, played an important role in novice programmer ability. The implication was that programming pedagogies must take into consideration the cognitive psychology of programming and the cognitive load imposed on learners. Abstracted Construct Instruction was developed based on these findings and forms a new pedagogy for teaching programming that promotes the recall of abstract patterns while reducing the cognitive demands associated with developing code. Cognitive load is determined by the student’s ability to ignore irrelevant surface features of the written problem and to cross-reference between the problem domain and their mental program model. The former is dealt with by producing tersely written exercises to eliminate distractors, while for the latter the teaching of problem solving should be delayed until the student’s program model is formed. While this does delay the development of problem solving skills, the problem solving abilities of students taught using this pedagogy were found to be comparable with students taught using a more traditional approach. Furthermore, monitoring students’ understanding of these patterns enabled micromanagement of the learning process, and hence explanations were provided for novice behaviour such as difficulties using arrays, inert knowledge and “code thrashing”. For teaching more complex problem solving, scaffolding of practice was investigated through a program framework that could be developed in stages by the students. However, personalising the level of scaffolding required was complicated and found to be difficult to achieve in practice. In both cases, these new teaching approaches evolved as part of a grounded theory study and a clear progression of teaching practice was demonstrated with appropriate evaluation at each stage in accordance with action researc

Proceedings of the 1993 Conference on Intelligent Computer-Aided Training and Virtual Environment Technology, Volume 1

These proceedings are organized in the same manner as the conference's contributed sessions, with the papers grouped by topic area. These areas are as follows: VE (virtual environment) training for Space Flight, Virtual Environment Hardware, Knowledge Aquisition for ICAT (Intelligent Computer-Aided Training) & VE, Multimedia in ICAT Systems, VE in Training & Education (1 & 2), Virtual Environment Software (1 & 2), Models in ICAT systems, ICAT Commercial Applications, ICAT Architectures & Authoring Systems, ICAT Education & Medical Applications, Assessing VE for Training, VE & Human Systems (1 & 2), ICAT Theory & Natural Language, ICAT Applications in the Military, VE Applications in Engineering, Knowledge Acquisition for ICAT, and ICAT Applications in Aerospace

Yabi - yet another business inteligence

Mestrado de dupla diplomação com a UTFPR - Universidade Tecnológica Federal do ParanáIn the context of Polytechnical Institute of Bragança during student registration time, the information technology department is found to be frequently interrupted in order to attend inquiries regarding the information stored in their databases. To mitigate this, Yabi was developed. It is a Web application built with Angular Framework for the user interface and Java with Spring for the functionalities. In general it provides a portal in which the institution’s employees can access the information found in its databases without the need to have technical knowledge. The developed application is found to attend most of the elicited requirements to be considered useful and offers a foundation for future improvements.No contexto do Instituto Politécnico de Bragança durante o período de matrículas, o departamento de serviços informáticos é frequentemente interrompido em busca de questionamentos sobre as informações contidas nas bases de dados da instituição. Para amenizar isso, o Yabi foi desenvolvido. Esta é uma aplicação Web construida com uma interface de usuário feita no Framework Angular e uma aplicação remota que implementa as funcionalidades necessárias e é escrita em Java com o framework Spring. De maneira geral ela fornece um portal que possibilita os colaboradoes da instituição a ter acesso as informações contidas nas bases de dados sem que seja necessário o conhecimento técnico. Por fim, considera-se que a aplicação final atende aos requisitos de maneira suficiente para ser considerada útil e ao mesmo tempo fornece uma plataforma para desenvolvimentos futuros