Assuring the model evolution of protocol software specifications by regression testing process improvement

A preliminary version of this paper has been presented at the 10th International Conference on Quality Software (QSIC 2010).Model-based testing helps test engineers automate their testing tasks so that they are more cost-effective. When the model is changed because of the evolution of the specification, it is important to maintain the test suites up to date for regression testing. A complete regeneration of the whole test suite from the new model, although inefficient, is still frequently used in the industry, including Microsoft. To handle specification evolution effectively, we propose a test case reusability analysis technique to identify reusable test cases of the original test suite based on graph analysis. We also develop a test suite augmentation technique to generate new test cases to cover the change-related parts of the new model. The experiment on four large protocol document testing projects shows that our technique can successfully identify a high percentage of reusable test cases and generate low-redundancy new test cases. When compared with a complete regeneration of the whole test suite, our technique significantly reduces regression testing time while maintaining the stability of requirement coverage over the evolution of requirements specifications. Copyright © 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.link_to_subscribed_fulltex

Northumbria Police custody health needs assessment

A health needs assessment of detainees in poilce custody in Northumbri

A study of Black Box Testing to generate the test cases and Statement coverage criteria to reduce the test cases

No Abstrac

Identifying and preventing health problems among young drug-misusing offenders

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to identify the health problems and treatment needs of drug-misusing offenders and to draw out the implications of the findings for health education and prevention. Design/methodology/approach – This analysis is based on data collected as part of the New English and Welsh Arrestee Drug Abuse Monitoring (NEW-ADAM) programme. The survey was based on interviews and urine sample collection with over 3,000 arrestees. Findings – The research found that young arrestees experienced a wide range of drug-related and general health problems. The implications of this are discussed in the context of programmes implemented as part of the government’s drug strategy. Originality/value – The NEW-ADAM surveys provide an original source of information on the drug and general health needs of young people at the first point of entry in the criminal justice system

Scheduling reentrant jobs on parallel machines with a remote server

This paper explores a specific combinatorial problem relating to re-entrant jobs on parallel primary machines, with a remote server machine. A middle operation is required by each job on the server before it returns to its primary processing machine. The problem is inspired by the logistics of a semi-automated micro-biology laboratory. The testing programme in the laboratory corresponds roughly to a hybrid flowshop, whose bottleneck stage is the subject of study. We demonstrate the NP-hard nature of the problem, and provide various structural features. A heuristic is developed and tested on randomly generated benchmark data. Results indicate solutions reliably within 1.5% of optimum. We also provide a greedy 2-approximation algorithm. Test on real-life data from the microbiology laboratory indicate a 20% saving relative to current practice, which is more than can be achieved currently with 3 instead of 2 people staffing the primary machines

Mass production of volume phase holographic gratings for the VIRUS spectrograph array

The Visible Integral-field Replicable Unit Spectrograph (VIRUS) is a baseline array of 150 copies of a simple, fiber-fed integral field spectrograph that will be deployed on the Hobby-Eberly Telescope (HET). VIRUS is the first optical astronomical instrument to be replicated on an industrial scale, and represents a relatively inexpensive solution for carrying out large-area spectroscopic surveys, such as the HET Dark Energy Experiment (HETDEX). Each spectrograph contains a volume phase holographic (VPH) grating with a 138 mm diameter clear aperture as its dispersing element. The instrument utilizes the grating in first-order for 350-550 nm. Including witness samples, a suite of 170 VPH gratings has been mass produced for VIRUS. Here, we present the design of the VIRUS VPH gratings and a discussion of their mass production. We additionally present the design and functionality of a custom apparatus that has been used to rapidly test the first-order diffraction efficiency of the gratings for various discrete wavelengths within the VIRUS spectral range. This device has been used to perform both in-situ tests to monitor the effects of adjustments to the production prescription as well as to carry out the final acceptance tests of the gratings' diffraction efficiency. Finally, we present the as-built performance results for the entire suite of VPH gratings.Comment: 16 pages, 11 figures, 2 tables. To be published in Proc. SPIE, 2014, "Advances in Optical and Mechanical Technologies for Telescopes and Instrumentation", 9151-53. The work presented in this article follows from arXiv:1207:448