An automated framework for software test oracle

Context: One of the important issues of software testing is to provide an automated test oracle. Test oracles are reliable sources of how the software under test must operate. In particular, they are used to evaluate the actual results that produced by the software. However, in order to generate an automated test oracle, oracle challenges need to be addressed. These challenges are output-domain generation, input domain to output domain mapping, and a comparator to decide on the accuracy of the actual outputs. Objective: This paper proposes an automated test oracle framework to address all of these challenges. Method: I/O Relationship Analysis is used to generate the output domain automatically and Multi-Networks Oracles based on artificial neural networks are introduced to handle the second challenge. The last challenge is addressed using an automated comparator that adjusts the oracle precision by defining the comparison tolerance. The proposed approach was evaluated using an industry strength case study, which was injected with some faults. The quality of the proposed oracle was measured by assessing its accuracy, precision, misclassification error and practicality. Mutation testing was considered to provide the evaluation framework by implementing two different versions of the case study: a Golden Version and a Mutated Version. Furthermore, a comparative study between the existing automated oracles and the proposed one is provided based on which challenges they can automate. Results: Results indicate that the proposed approach automated the oracle generation process 97% in this experiment. Accuracy of the proposed oracle was up to 98.26%, and the oracle detected up to 97.7% of the injected faults. Conclusion: Consequently, the results of the study highlight the practicality of the proposed oracle in addition to the automation it offers

Utilizing multifaceted requirement traceability approach: a case study

Software evolution is inevitable. When a system evolves, there are certain relationships among software artifacts that must be maintained. Requirement traceability is one of the important factors in facilitating software evolution since it maintains the artifacts relationship before and after a change is performed. Requirement traceability can be expensive activities. Many researchers have addressed the problem of requirement traceability, especially to support software evolution activities. Yet, the evaluation results of these approaches show that most of them typically provide only limited support to software evolution. Based on the problems of requirement traceability, we have identified three directions that are important for traceability to support software evolution, i.e. process automation, procedure simplicity, and best results achievement. Those three directions are addressed in our multifaceted approach of requirement traceability. This approach utilizes three facets to generate links between artifacts, i.e. syntactical similarity matching, link prioritization, and heuristic-list based processes. This paper proposes the utilization of multifaceted approach to traceability generation and recovery in facilitating software evolution process. The complete experiment has been applied in a real case study. The results show that utilization of these three facets in generating the traceability among artifacts is better than the existing approach, especially in terms of its accuracy

Comparative analysis on adaptive features for RFID middleware

Middleware is software that connects between hardware and application layer. Traditional middleware is limited in its ability to support adaptation while adaptive middleware enables modifying its behavior to conform to new situation. RFID applications grow widely and are used in many purposes such as supply chain management and ubiquitous computing enabled by pervasive, low cost sensing and identification. Implementing adaptive characteristic in RFID middleware will increase the capability of adaptation to specific environment such as different reader/tag, different application, and different platform. Adaptive middleware enables modifying the behavior of a distributed application after the application is developed in response to some changes in functional requirements or operating conditions. An extensive study has been carried out, and comparative analysis has been done on identifying the standard features that reflect the functionalities of RFID middleware and adaptive features that represent the non-functionalities of RFID middleware address to overcome the specific problems of application systems. This paper discusses the outcome of this study and adaptive middleware architecture for RFID applications is proposed that supports multi readers and multi applications

STATIC ANALYSIS TO AVOID OVERLAP OF POLICIES IN POLICY-BASED MANAGEMENT SYSTEMS

ABSTRAC

Implementation guidelines of the walk-through and questionnaire techniques in the usability testing of the scrum method

A wrongly chosen software development method often leads to the increased development cost or possible failure of a project. Therefore, a software development method should be systematically evaluated in order to measure its suitability for a particular type of project settings. Recently, there is an increasing interest in using usability test to evaluate the usability of software products and processes. In this paper, we will investigate the guidelines on using two usability testing techniques namely Walk-Through and Questionnaire, which are chosen due to the minimum involvement of human subjects. We describe the recommended ways of creating the usability test materials, analyzing the collected data, and creating a report based on the usability test results. The test is carried out to evaluate the use of Scrum method in the Tabung Baitulmal Sarawak (TBS) web-based system. The results presented in this paper are expected to provide software engineers with a systematic guideline in performing Walk-Through and Questionnaire as their usability testing techniques

Case Study on Non-Functional Requirement Change Impact Traceability for Agile Software Development

Currently, it is crucial to develop a complex software on time. Agile software development methodologies provide methods to develop a system in term of time and cost-saving but it has been criticized for software quality management. In this paper, a case study is used to find out the need of NFR change impact traceability approach in most of Agile software methodology. This case study was conducted in an undergraduate course that trained the students on how to develop software using Agile process model.This case study has been conducted for 4 months in an undergraduate-level course, Application Development. The samples of this case study are among Year 3 undergraduate students. The case study shows the lack of traceability techniques in the existing Agile process model (SFDD- Secured Feature Driven Development) that result to non-awareness of NFR change impact during development. Based on the case study mentioned the main objective of the case study conducted in survey is to empirically test the theoretical constructs and the hypothesized relationships of the research issues that concern on the lack of change impact management towards NFR in Agile Software Methodology.  TANC (Traceability for Agile Non-Functional Requirement Change Impact) model offered techniques in tracing change impact during the agile development process. Therefore, the result of the case study, a traceability process model needs to design in order to tackle the NFR change impact issues in Agile software development

Policy overlap analysis to avoid policy conflict in policy-based management systems

PobMC is an adaptive scalable approach which uses policies to control and adapt the system behaviour.Moreover, PobMC has the capability to decouple the adaptation concerns from the application code. Since policies are used to govern the system behavior, conflicts may arise in the set of policies and also may arise during the refinement process,between the high-level goals and the implementable policies.Furthermore, policy conflict may result from propagation, action composition and other constraint policies, which can not be detected by simply comparing authorization policies. In this paper we classify our system policy conflicts to verify that policies enforced correctly. Then, we present a static analysis to address the overlap of domains when there are two or more policies are enforced simultaneously. In addition, the paper provides temporal specification patterns to detect each type of conflicts. The evaluation result shows that the performance of PobMC is better than the previous works. Less than a second is enough to perform every task as individual

Non functional requirements (NFRs) traceability metamodel for agile development

Agile methodologies are well known for early and frequent releases. Besides, these methodologies also handle requirement changes well without causing delays. However, it has been noticed that the functional requirements changes can affect the non-functional requirements (NFRs) such as security and performance. It is also possible that the agile team is not even aware of these effects causing dysfunctional system. This issue could be addressed by offering traceability mechanism that helps to trace the effect of functional requirement changes on the non-functional requirements. Unfortunately, a few researchers have conducted studies regarding this issue. Thus, this study attempts to present a Traceability Process Model (TPM) to tackle the issue of tracing NFR especially security and performance. However, to materialize a full scale TPM, a metamodel is necessary. Therefore in this paper, we present a metamodel by integrating two existing metamodels. Then we validate the newly built metamodel with precision and recall methods. Lastly, we also develop a traceability tool that is based on the proposed metamodel

Case study on non-functional requirement change impact traceability for agile software development

Currently, it is crucial to develop a complex software on time. Agile software development methodologies provide methods to develop a system in term of time and cost-saving but it has been criticized for software quality management. In this paper, a case study is used to find out the need of NFR change impact traceability approach in most of Agile software methodology. This case study was conducted in an undergraduate course that trained the students on how to develop software using Agile process model. This case study has been conducted for 4 months in an undergraduate-level course, Application Development. The samples of this case study are among Year 3 undergraduate students. The case study shows the lack of traceability techniques in the existing Agile process model (SFDD-Secured Feature Driven Development) that result to non-awareness of NFR change impact during development. Based on the case study mentioned the main objective of the case study conducted in survey is to empirically test the theoretical constructs and the hypothesized relationships of the research issues that concern on the lack of change impact management towards NFR in Agile Software Methodology. TANC (Traceability for Agile Non-Functional Requirement Change Impact) model offered techniques in tracing change impact during the agile development process. Therefore, the result of the case study, a traceability process model needs to design in order to tackle the NFR change impact issues in Agile software development

Antimicrobial resistance among migrants in Europe: a systematic review and meta-analysis

BACKGROUND: Rates of antimicrobial resistance (AMR) are rising globally and there is concern that increased migration is contributing to the burden of antibiotic resistance in Europe. However, the effect of migration on the burden of AMR in Europe has not yet been comprehensively examined. Therefore, we did a systematic review and meta-analysis to identify and synthesise data for AMR carriage or infection in migrants to Europe to examine differences in patterns of AMR across migrant groups and in different settings. METHODS: For this systematic review and meta-analysis, we searched MEDLINE, Embase, PubMed, and Scopus with no language restrictions from Jan 1, 2000, to Jan 18, 2017, for primary data from observational studies reporting antibacterial resistance in common bacterial pathogens among migrants to 21 European Union-15 and European Economic Area countries. To be eligible for inclusion, studies had to report data on carriage or infection with laboratory-confirmed antibiotic-resistant organisms in migrant populations. We extracted data from eligible studies and assessed quality using piloted, standardised forms. We did not examine drug resistance in tuberculosis and excluded articles solely reporting on this parameter. We also excluded articles in which migrant status was determined by ethnicity, country of birth of participants' parents, or was not defined, and articles in which data were not disaggregated by migrant status. Outcomes were carriage of or infection with antibiotic-resistant organisms. We used random-effects models to calculate the pooled prevalence of each outcome. The study protocol is registered with PROSPERO, number CRD42016043681. FINDINGS: We identified 2274 articles, of which 23 observational studies reporting on antibiotic resistance in 2319 migrants were included. The pooled prevalence of any AMR carriage or AMR infection in migrants was 25·4% (95% CI 19·1-31·8; I2 =98%), including meticillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (7·8%, 4·8-10·7; I2 =92%) and antibiotic-resistant Gram-negative bacteria (27·2%, 17·6-36·8; I2 =94%). The pooled prevalence of any AMR carriage or infection was higher in refugees and asylum seekers (33·0%, 18·3-47·6; I2 =98%) than in other migrant groups (6·6%, 1·8-11·3; I2 =92%). The pooled prevalence of antibiotic-resistant organisms was slightly higher in high-migrant community settings (33·1%, 11·1-55·1; I2 =96%) than in migrants in hospitals (24·3%, 16·1-32·6; I2 =98%). We did not find evidence of high rates of transmission of AMR from migrant to host populations. INTERPRETATION: Migrants are exposed to conditions favouring the emergence of drug resistance during transit and in host countries in Europe. Increased antibiotic resistance among refugees and asylum seekers and in high-migrant community settings (such as refugee camps and detention facilities) highlights the need for improved living conditions, access to health care, and initiatives to facilitate detection of and appropriate high-quality treatment for antibiotic-resistant infections during transit and in host countries. Protocols for the prevention and control of infection and for antibiotic surveillance need to be integrated in all aspects of health care, which should be accessible for all migrant groups, and should target determinants of AMR before, during, and after migration. FUNDING: UK National Institute for Health Research Imperial Biomedical Research Centre, Imperial College Healthcare Charity, the Wellcome Trust, and UK National Institute for Health Research Health Protection Research Unit in Healthcare-associated Infections and Antimictobial Resistance at Imperial College London