| 1. |
- Cvitic, Petya Hristova, et al.
(författare)
-
Investigating Software Testing and Maintenance of Open-Source Distributed Ledger
- 2023
-
Ingår i: Proceedings - 2023 IEEE International Conference on Software Analysis, Evolution and Reengineering, SANER 2023. - : IEEE conference proceedings. - 9781665452786 ; , s. 886-896
-
Konferensbidrag (refereegranskat)abstract
- A distributed ledger is the backbone of all blockchain solutions. It provides a shared database spreading across a network of nodes. The number of DL solutions and their implementations has grown in recent years. Besides the architectural and performance promises of these solutions, organizations seekingto implement DL also need to consider the overall quality of the software available and its ecosystem. Particularly, previous research has identified the need to better understand the testing and maintenance practices behind these types of technologies. This paper investigates the testing and maintenance of 18 different open-source projects that implement distributed ledgers. We perform a manual inspection of test artefacts and mine the history of commits, issues and contributors of the chosen projects to understand the landscape of testing and maintenance in these projects. Our findings suggest that unit and integration tests are present in most projects, they do not follow a holistic system testing approach. Moreover, projects rely on a small team of core contributors (5 on average). While the projects are continuously maintained, larger changes are uncommon. Our results can be used for benchmarking and pinpointing areas of improvement for the development of distributed ledgers.
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| 2. |
- Cvitic, Petya Hristova, et al.
(författare)
-
Investigating Software Testing and Maintenance of Open-Source Distributed Ledger
- 2023
-
Ingår i: Proceedings - 2023 IEEE International Conference on Software Analysis, Evolution and Reengineering, SANER 2023. - : IEEE. - 2833-9061. - 9781665452786
-
Konferensbidrag (refereegranskat)abstract
- A distributed ledger is the backbone of all blockchain solutions. It provides a shared database spreading across a network of nodes. The number of DL solutions and their implementations has grown in recent years. Besides the architectural and performance promises of thesesolutions, organizations seekingto implement DL also need to consider the overall quality of the software available and its ecosystem. Particularly, previous research has identified the need to better understand the testing and maintenance practices behind these types of technologies. This paper investigates the testing and maintenance of 18 different open-source projects that implement distributed ledgers. We perform a manual inspection of test artefacts and mine the history of commits, issues and contributors of the chosen projects to understand the landscape of testing and maintenance in these projects. Our findings suggest that unit and integration tests are present in most projects, they do not follow a holistic system testing approach. Moreover, projects rely on a small team of core contributors (5 on average). While the projects are continuously maintained, larger changes are uncommon. Our results can be used for benchmarking and pinpointing areas of improvement for the development of distributed ledgers.
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| 3. |
- Dobslaw, Felix, 1983-
(författare)
-
A Parameter Tuning Framework for Metaheuristics Based on Design of Experiments and Artificial Neural Networks
- 2010
-
Ingår i: Proceeding of the International Conference on Computer Mathematics and Natural Computing 2010. - : WASET. ; 64, s. 213-216
-
Konferensbidrag (refereegranskat)abstract
- In this paper, a framework for the simplification andstandardization of metaheuristic related parameter tuning by applyinga four phase methodology, utilizing Design of Experiments andArtificial Neural Networks, is presented. Metaheuristics are multipurposeproblem solvers that are utilized on computational optimizationproblems for which no efficient problem-specific algorithmexists. Their successful application to concrete problems requires thefinding of a good initial parameter setting, which is a tedious andtime-consuming task. Recent research reveals the lack of approachwhen it comes to this so called parameter tuning process. In themajority of publications, researchers do have a weak motivation fortheir respective choices, if any. Because initial parameter settingshave a significant impact on the solutions quality, this course ofaction could lead to suboptimal experimental results, and therebya fraudulent basis for the drawing of conclusions.
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| 4. |
- Dobslaw, Felix, 1983-
(författare)
-
An experimental study on robust parameter settings
- 2010
-
Ingår i: Proceedings of the 12th annual conference comp on Genetic and evolutionary computation. - New York, NY, USA : ACM Press. - 9781450300735 ; , s. 1999-2002
-
Konferensbidrag (refereegranskat)abstract
- That there is no best initial parameter setting for a metaheuristicon all optimization problems is a proven fact (nofree lunch theorem). This paper studies the applicability ofso called robust parameter settings for combinatorial optimizationproblems. Design of Experiments supported parameterscreening had been carried out, analyzing a discreteParticle Swarm Optimization algorithm on three demographicallyvery dissimilar instances of the Traveling SalesmenProblem. First experimental results indicate that parametersettings produce varying performance quality forthe three instances. The robust parameter setting is outperformedin two out of three cases. The results are evensignicantly worse when considering quality/time trade-o.A methodology for problem generalization is referred to asa possible solution.
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| 5. |
- Dobslaw, Felix, 1983-, et al.
(författare)
-
An Object-Oriented Model in Support of Context Aware Mobile Applications
- 2010
-
Ingår i: Mobile Wireless Middleware, Operating Systems, and Applications. - Berlin Hedielberg : Springer Verlag. - 9783642177576
-
Konferensbidrag (refereegranskat)abstract
- Intelligent and context-aware mobile services require users and applications to share information and utilize services from remote locations. Thus, context information from the users must be structured and be accessible to applications running in end-devices. In response to this challenge, we present a shared object-oriented meta model for a persistent agent environment. The approach enables agents to be context aware facilitating the creation of ambient intelligence demonstrated by a sensor-based scenario. The agents are context-aware as agent actions are based upon sensor information, social information, and the behavior of co-agents.
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| 6. |
- Dobslaw, Felix, 1983-, et al.
(författare)
-
Automated black-box boundary value detection
- 2023
-
Ingår i: PeerJ Computer Science. - : PeerJ. - 2376-5992. ; 9
-
Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Abstract Software systems typically have an input domain that can be subdivided into sub-domains, each of which generates similar or related outputs. Testing it on the boundaries between these sub-domains is critical to ensure high-quality software. Therefore, boundary value analysis and testing have been a fundamental part of the software testing toolbox for a long time and are typically taught early to software engineering students. Despite its many argued benefits, boundary value analysis for a given software specification or application is typically described in abstract terms. This allows for variation in how testers apply it and in the benefits they see. Additionally, its adoption has been limited since it requires a specification or model to be analysed. We propose an automated black-box boundary value detection method to support software testers in performing systematic boundary value analysis. This dynamic method can be utilized even without a specification or model. The proposed method is based on a metric referred to as the program derivative, which quantifies the level of boundariness of test inputs. By combining this metric with search algorithms, we can identify and rank pairs of inputs as good boundary candidates, i.e., inputs that are in close proximity to each other but with outputs that are far apart. We have implemented the AutoBVA approach and evaluated it on a curated dataset of example programs. Furthermore, we have applied the approach broadly to a sample of 613 functions from the base library of the Julia programming language. The approach could identify boundary candidates that highlight diverse boundary behaviours in over 70% of investigated systems under test. The results demonstrate that even a simple variant of the program derivative, combined with broad sampling and search over the input space, can identify interesting boundary candidates for a significant portion of the functions under investigation. In conclusion, we also discuss the future extension of the approach to encompass more complex systems under test cases and datatypes.
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| 7. |
- Dobslaw, Felix, 1983-
(författare)
-
Automatic Instance-based Tailoring of Parameter Settings for Metaheuristics
- 2011
-
Licentiatavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- Many industrial problems in various fields, such as logistics, process management, orproduct design, can be formalized and expressed as optimization problems in order tomake them solvable by optimization algorithms. However, solvers that guarantee thefinding of optimal solutions (complete) can in practice be unacceptably slow. Thisis one of the reasons why approximative (incomplete) algorithms, producing near-optimal solutions under restrictions (most dominant time), are of vital importance.Those approximative algorithms go under the umbrella term metaheuristics, each of which is more or less suitable for particular optimization problems. These algorithmsare flexible solvers that only require a representation for solutions and an evaluation function when searching the solution space for optimality.What all metaheuristics have in common is that their search is guided by certain control parameters. These parameters have to be manually set by the user andare generally problem and interdependent: A setting producing near-optimal resultsfor one problem is likely to perform worse for another. Automating the parameter setting process in a sophisticated, computationally cheap, and statistically reliable way is challenging and a significant amount of attention in the artificial intelligence and operational research communities. This activity has not yet produced any major breakthroughs concerning the utilization of problem instance knowledge or the employment of dynamic algorithm configuration.The thesis promotes automated parameter optimization with reference to the inverse impact of problem instance diversity on the quality of parameter settings with respect to instance-algorithm pairs. It further emphasizes the similarities between static and dynamic algorithm configuration and related problems in order to show how they relate to each other. It further proposes two frameworks for instance-based algorithm configuration and evaluates the experimental results. The first is a recommender system for static configurations, combining experimental design and machine learning. The second framework can be used for static or dynamic configuration,taking advantage of the iterative nature of population-based algorithms, which is a very important sub-class of metaheuristics.A straightforward implementation of framework one did not result in the expected improvements, supposedly because of pre-stabilization issues. The second approach shows competitive results in the scenario when compared to a state-of-the-art model-free configurator, reducing the training time by in excess of two orders of magnitude.
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| 8. |
- Dobslaw, Felix, 1983, et al.
(författare)
-
Boundary Value Exploration for Software Analysis
- 2020
-
Ingår i: Proceedings - 2020 IEEE 13th International Conference on Software Testing, Verification and Validation Workshops, ICSTW 2020. - : IEEE. ; , s. 346-353
-
Konferensbidrag (refereegranskat)abstract
- For software to be reliable and resilient, it is widely accepted that tests must be created and maintained alongside the software itself. One safeguard from vulnerabilities and failures in code is to ensure correct behavior on the boundaries between subdomains of the input space. So-called boundary value analysis (BVA) and boundary value testing (BVT) techniques aim to exercise those boundaries and increase test effectiveness. However, the concepts of BVA and BVT themselves are not generally well defined, and it is not clear how to identify relevant sub-domains, and thus the boundaries delineating them, given a specification. This has limited adoption and hindered automation. We clarify BVA and BVT and introduce Boundary Value Exploration (BVE) to describe techniques that support them by helping to detect and identify boundary inputs. Additionally, we propose two concrete BVE techniques based on information-theoretic distance functions: (i) an algorithm for boundary detection and (ii) the usage of software visualization to explore the behavior of the software under test and identify its boundary behavior. As an initial evaluation, we apply these techniques on a much used and well-tested date handling library. Our results reveal questionable behavior at boundaries highlighted by our techniques. In conclusion, we argue that the boundary value exploration that our techniques enable is a step towards automated boundary value analysis and testing, which can foster their wider use and improve test effectiveness and efficiency.
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| 9. |
- Dobslaw, Felix, 1983-
(författare)
-
End-to-End Quality of Service Guarantees for Wireless Sensor Networks
- 2015
-
Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- Wireless sensor networks have been a key driver of innovation and societal progressover the last three decades. They allow for simplicity because they eliminate ca-bling complexity while increasing the flexibility of extending or adjusting networksto changing demands. Wireless sensor networks are a powerful means of fillingthe technological gap for ever-larger industrial sites of growing interconnection andbroader integration. Nonetheless, the management of wireless networks is difficultin situations wherein communication requires application-specific, network-widequality of service guarantees. A minimum end-to-end reliability for packet arrivalclose to 100% in combination with latency bounds in the millisecond range must befulfilled in many mission-critical applications.The problem addressed in this thesis is the demand for algorithmic support forend-to-end quality of service guarantees in mission-critical wireless sensor networks.Wireless sensors have traditionally been used to collect non-critical periodic read-ings; however, the intriguing advantages of wireless technologies in terms of theirflexibility and cost effectiveness justify the exploration of their potential for controland mission-critical applications, subject to the requirements of ultra-reliable com-munication, in harsh and dynamically changing environments such as manufactur-ing factories, oil rigs, and power plants.This thesis provides three main contributions in the scope of wireless sensor net-works. First, it presents a scalable algorithm that guarantees end-to-end reliabilitythrough scheduling. Second, it presents a cross-layer optimization/configurationframework that can be customized to meet multiple end-to-end quality of servicecriteria simultaneously. Third, it proposes an extension of the framework used toenable service differentiation and priority handling. Adaptive, scalable, and fast al-gorithms are proposed. The cross-layer framework is based on a genetic algorithmthat assesses the quality of service of the network as a whole and integrates the phys-ical layer, medium access control layer, network layer, and transport layer.Algorithm performance and scalability are verified through numerous simula-tions on hundreds of convergecast topologies by comparing the proposed algorithmswith other recently proposed algorithms for ensuring reliable packet delivery. Theresults show that the proposed SchedEx scheduling algorithm is both significantlymore scalable and better performing than are the competing slot-based schedulingalgorithms. The integrated solving of routing and scheduling using a genetic al-vvigorithm further improves on the original results by more than 30% in terms of la-tency. The proposed framework provides live graphical feedback about potentialbottlenecks and may be used for analysis and debugging as well as the planning ofgreen-field networks.SchedEx is found to be an adaptive, scalable, and fast algorithm that is capa-ble of ensuring the end-to-end reliability of packet arrival throughout the network.SchedEx-GA successfully identifies network configurations, thus integrating the rout-ing and scheduling decisions for networks with diverse traffic priority levels. Fur-ther, directions for future research are presented, including the extension of simula-tions to experimental work and the consideration of alternative network topologies.
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| 10. |
- Dobslaw, Felix, 1983-, et al.
(författare)
-
End-to-End Reliability-aware Scheduling for Wireless Sensor Networks
- 2016
-
Ingår i: IEEE Transactions on Industrial Informatics. - 1551-3203 .- 1941-0050. ; 12:2, s. 758-767
-
Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Wireless Sensor Networks (WSN) are gaining popularity as a flexible and economical alternative to field-bus installations for monitoring and control applications. For missioncritical applications, communication networks must provide endto- end reliability guarantees, posing substantial challenges for WSN. Reliability can be improved by redundancy, and is often addressed on the MAC layer by re-submission of lost packets, usually applying slotted scheduling. Recently, researchers have proposed a strategy to optimally improve the reliability of a given schedule by repeating the most rewarding slots in a schedule incrementally until a deadline. This Incrementer can be used with most scheduling algorithms but has scalability issues which narrows its usability to offline calculations of schedules, for networks that are rather static. In this paper, we introduce SchedEx, a generic heuristic scheduling algorithm extension which guarantees a user-defined end-to-end reliability. SchedEx produces competitive schedules to the existing approach, and it does that consistently more than an order of magnitude faster. The harsher the end-to-end reliability demand of the network, the better SchedEx performs compared to the Incrementer. We further show that SchedEx has a more evenly distributed improvement impact on the scheduling algorithms, whereas the Incrementer favors schedules created by certain scheduling algorithms.
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| 11. |
- Dobslaw, Felix, 1983, et al.
(författare)
-
Estimating Return on Investment for GUI Test Automation Frameworks
- 2019
-
Ingår i: Proceedings - International Symposium on Software Reliability Engineering, ISSRE. - 1071-9458. - 9781728149813 ; 2019-October
-
Konferensbidrag (refereegranskat)abstract
- Automated graphical user interface (GUI) tests can reduce manual testing activities and increase test frequency. This motivates the conversion of manual test cases into automated GUI tests. However, it is not clear whether such automation is cost-effective given that GUI automation scripts add to the code base and demand maintenance as a system evolves. In this paper, we introduce a method for estimating maintenance cost and Return on Investment (ROI) for Automated GUI Testing (AGT). The method utilizes the existing source code change history and has the potential to be used for the evaluation of other testing or quality assurance automation technologies. We evaluate the method for a real-world, industrial software system and compare two fundamentally different AGT frameworks, namely Selenium and EyeAutomate, to estimate and compare their ROI. We also report on their defect-finding capabilities and usability. The quantitative data is complemented by interviews with employees at the company the study has been conducted at. The method was successfully applied, and estimated maintenance cost and ROI for both frameworks are reported. Overall, the study supports earlier results showing that implementation time is the leading cost for introducing AGT. The findings further suggest that, while EyeAutomate tests are significantly faster to implement, Selenium tests require more of a programming background but less maintenance.
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| 12. |
- Dobslaw, Felix, 1983-, et al.
(författare)
-
Experiences with Remote Examination Formats in Light of GPT-4
- 2023
-
Ingår i: ACM International Conference Proceeding Series. - : Association for Computing Machinery (ACM). - 9781450399562 ; , s. 220-225
-
Konferensbidrag (refereegranskat)abstract
- Sudden access to the rapidly improving large language model GPT by OpenAI forces educational institutions worldwide to revisit their exam procedures. In the pre-GPT era, we successfully applied oral and open-book home exams for two courses in the third year of our predominantly remote Software Engineering BSc program. We ask in this paper whether our current open-book exams are still viable or whether a move back to a legally compliant but less scalable oral exam is the only workable alternative. We further compare work-effort estimates between oral and open-book exams and report on differences in throughput and grade distribution over eight years to better understand the impact of examination format on the outcome. Examining GPT-4 on the most recent open-book exams showed that our current Artificial Intelligence and Reactive Programming exams are not GPT v4 proof. Three potential weaknesses of GPT are outlined. We also found that grade distributions have largely been unaffected by the examination format, opening up for a move to oral examinations only if needed. Throughput was higher for open-book exam course instances (73% vs 64%), while fail rates were too (12% vs 7%), with teacher workload increasing even for smaller classes. We also report on our experience regarding effort. Oral examinations are efficient for smaller groups but come with caveats regarding intensity and stress.
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| 13. |
- Dobslaw, Felix, 1983-
(författare)
-
Finding Optimal Size TDMA Schedules using Integer Programming
-
Annan publikation (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- The problem of finding a shortest TDMA is formally described as anInteger Program (IP). A brief user manual explains how the attached implementation can be used to find an optimal size TDMA for any givenWSN and routing table, fulfilling the validity criteria.
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| 14. |
- Dobslaw, Felix, 1983-, et al.
(författare)
-
Free the Bugs : Disclosing Blocking Violations in Reactive Programming
- 2020
-
Ingår i: 2020 IEEE 20th International Working Conference on Source Code Analysis and Manipulation (SCAM). - : IEEE. - 9781728192482 ; , s. 177-186
-
Konferensbidrag (refereegranskat)abstract
- In programming, concurrency allows threads to share processing units interleaving and seemingly simultaneous to improve resource utilization and performance. Previous research has found that concurrency faults are hard to avoid, hard to find, often leading to undesired and unpredictable behavior. Further, with the growing availability of multi-core devices and adaptation of concurrency features in high-level languages, concurrency faults occur reportedly often, which is why countermeasures must be investigated to limit harm. Reactive programming provides an abstraction to simplify complex concurrent and asynchronous tasks through reactive language extensions such as the RxJava and Project Reactor libraries for Java. Still, blocking violations are possibly resulting in concurrency faults with no Java compiler warnings. BlockHound is a tool that detects incorrect blocking by wrapping the original code and intercepting blocking calls to provide appropriate runtime errors. In this study, we seek an understanding of how common blocking violations are and whether a tool such as BlockHound can give us insight into the root-causes to highlight them as pitfalls to developers. The investigated Softwares are Java-based open-source projects using reactive frameworks selected based on high star ratings and large fork quantities that indicate high adoption. We activated BlockHound in the project’s test-suites and analyzed log files for common patterns to reveal blocking violations in 7/29 investigated open-source projects with 5024 stars and 1437 forks. A small number of system calls could be identified as root-causes. We here present countermeasures that successfully removed the uncertainty of blocking violations. The code’s intentional logic was retained in all validated projects through passing unit-tests.
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| 15. |
- Dobslaw, Felix, 1983-, et al.
(författare)
-
Generic and industrial scale many-criteria regression test selection
- 2023
-
Ingår i: Journal of Systems and Software. - : Elsevier. - 0164-1212 .- 1873-1228. ; 205
-
Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- While several test case selection algorithms (heuristic and optimal) and formulations (linear and non-linear) have been proposed, no multi-criteria framework enables Pareto search — the state-of-the-art approach of doing multi-criteria optimization. Therefore, we introduce the highly parallelizable, openly available Many-Criteria Test-Optimization Algorithm (MC-TOA) framework that combines heuristic Pareto search and optimality gap knowledge per criterion. MC-TOA is largely agnostic to the criteria formulations and can incorporate many criteria where existing approaches offer limited scope (single or few objectives/constraints), lack flexibility in the expression and assurance of constraints, or run into problem complexity issues. For two large-scale systems with up to six criteria and thousands of system test cases, MC-TOA not only produces, over the board, superior Pareto fronts in terms of HVI score compared to the state-of-the-art many-objective heuristic baseline, it also does that within minutes of runtime for worst-case executions, i.e., assuming that a regression affects the entire test-suite. MC-TOA depends on convex solvers. We find that the evaluated open-source solvers are slower but suffice for smaller systems, while being less robust for larger systems. Linear formulations execute faster and obtain near-optimal results, which led to faster and better overall convergence of MC-TOA compared to integer formulations. Editor's note: Open Science material was validated by the Journal of Systems and Software Open Science Board.
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| 16. |
- Dobslaw, Felix, 1983-
(författare)
-
InPUT: The Intelligent Parameter Utilization Tool
- 2012
-
Ingår i: GECCO Companion 12. - New York, NY, USA : ACM Press. - 9781450311786 ; , s. 149-156
-
Konferensbidrag (refereegranskat)abstract
- Computer experiments are part of the daily business formany researchers within the area of computational intelligence. However, there is no standard for either human orcomputer readable documentation of computer experiments.Such a standard could considerably improve the collaboration between experimental researchers, given it is intuitiveto use. In response to this deficiency the Intelligent Param-eter Utilization Tool ( InPUT ) is introduced. InPUT offers ageneral and programming language independent format forthe definition of parameters and their ranges. It providesservices to simplify the implementation of algorithms andcan be used as a substitute for input mechanisms of existing frameworks. InPUT reduces code-complexity and increases the reusability of algorithm designs as well as the reproducibility of experiments. InPUT is available as open-source for Java and this will soon also be extended to C++, two ofthe predominant languages of choice for the development ofevolutionary algorithms.
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| 17. |
- Dobslaw, Felix, 1983-
(författare)
-
Iteration-wise parameter learning
- 2011
-
Ingår i: 2011 IEEE Congress of Evolutionary Computation, CEC 2011. - New Orleans, LA : IEEE conference proceedings. - 9781424478347 ; , s. 455-462
-
Konferensbidrag (refereegranskat)abstract
- Adjusting the control parameters of population-based algorithms is a means for improving the quality of these algorithms' result when solving optimization problems. The difficulty lies in determining when to assign individual values to specific parameters during the run. This paper investigates the possible implications of a generic and computationally cheap approach towards parameter analysis for population-based algorithms. The effect of parameter settings was analyzed in the application of a genetic algorithm to a set of traveling salesman problem instances. The findings suggest that statistics about local changes of a search from iteration i to iteration i + 1 can provide valuable insight into the sensitivity of the algorithm to parameter values. A simple method for choosing static parameter settings has been shown to recommend settings competitive to those extracted from a state-of-the-art parameter tuner, paramlLS, with major time and setup advantages.
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| 18. |
- Dobslaw, Felix, 1983-, et al.
(författare)
-
Latency Improvement Strategies for Reliability-Aware Scheduling in Industrial Wireless Sensor Networks
- 2015
-
Ingår i: International Journal of Distributed Sensor Networks. - : SAGE Publications. - 1550-1329 .- 1550-1477. ; 2015, s. 1-10
-
Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- We propose novel strategies for end-to-end reliability-aware scheduling in Industrial Wireless Sensor Networks (IWSNs). Becauseof stringent reliability requirements in industrial applications where missed packets may have disastrous or lethal consequences,all IWSN communication standards are based on Time Division Multiple Access (TDMA), allowing for deterministic channelaccess on the MAC layer. We therefore extend an existing generic and scalable reliability-aware scheduling approach by the name ofSchedEx. SchedEx has proven to quickly produce TDMA schedules that guarantee a user-defined end-to-end reliability level ? for allmultihop communication in a WSN. Moreover, SchedEx executes orders of magnitude faster than recent algorithms in the literaturewhile producing schedules with competitive latencies. We generalize the original problem formulation from single-channel tomultichannel scheduling and propose a scalable integration into the existing SchedEx approach. We further introduce a noveloptimal bound that produces TDMA schedules with latencies around 20% shorter than the original SchedEx algorithm. Combiningthe novel strategies with multiple sinks, multiple channels, and the introduced optimal bound, we could through simulations verifylatency improvements by almost an order of magnitude, reducing the TDMA superframe execution times from tens of seconds toseconds only, which allows for a utilization of SchedEx for many time-critical control applications.
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| 19. |
- Dobslaw, Felix, 1983-, et al.
(författare)
-
QoS Assessment for Mission-critical Wireless Sensor Network Applications
- 2013
-
Ingår i: Proceedings - Conference on Local Computer Networks, LCN. - : IEEE Xplore. ; , s. 663-666
-
Konferensbidrag (refereegranskat)abstract
- Wireless sensor networks (WSN) must ensure worst-case end-to-end delay and reliability guarantees for mission-critical applications.TDMA-based scheduling offers delay guarantees, thus it is used in industrial monitoring and automation. We propose to evolve pairs of TDMA schedule and routing-tree in a cross-layer in order to fulfill multiple conflicting QoS requirements,exemplified by latency and reliability.The genetic algorithm we utilize can be used as an analytical tool for both the feasibility and expected QoS in production. Near-optimal cross-layer solutions are found within seconds and can be directly enforced into the network.
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| 20. |
- Dobslaw, Felix, 1983-
(författare)
-
Recent Development in Automatic Parameter Tuning for Metaheuristics
- 2010
-
Ingår i: Proceedings of the 19<sup>th</sup> Annual Conference of Doctoral Students - WDS 2010. ; , s. -10
-
Konferensbidrag (refereegranskat)abstract
- Parameter tuning is an optimization problem with the objective of finding good static pa-rameter settings before the execution of a metaheuristic on a problem at hand. The requirementof tuning multiple control parameters, combined with the stochastic nature of the algorithms,make parameter tuning a non-trivial problem. To make things worse, one parameter vector allowing the algorithm to solve all optimization problems to the best of its potential is verifiable non-existent, as can be inferred from the no free lunch theorem of optimization. Manual tuning can be conducted, with the drawback of being very time consuming and failure prone. Hence, means for automated parameter tuning are required. This paper serves as an overview about recent work within the field of automated parameter tuning.
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| 21. |
- Dobslaw, Felix, 1983-, et al.
(författare)
-
Similarities of Testing Programmed and Learnt Software
- 2023
-
Ingår i: Proceedings - 2023 IEEE 16th International Conference on Software Testing, Verification and Validation Workshops, ICSTW 2023. - : IEEE conference proceedings. ; , s. 78-81
-
Konferensbidrag (refereegranskat)abstract
- This study examines to what extent the testing of traditional software components and machine learning (ML) models fundamentally differs or not. While some researchers argue that ML software requires new concepts and perspectives for testing, our analysis highlights that, at a fundamental level, the specification and testing of a software component are not dependent on the development process used or on implementation details. Although the software engineering/computer science (SE/CS) and Data Science/ML (DS/ML) communities have developed different expectations, unique perspectives, and varying testing methods, they share clear commonalities that can be leveraged. We argue that both areas can learn from each other, and a non-dual perspective could provide novel insights not only for testing ML but also for testing traditional software. Therefore, we call upon researchers from both communities to collaborate more closely and develop testing methods and tools that can address both traditional and ML software components. While acknowledging their differences has merits, we believe there is great potential in working on unified methods and tools that can address both types of software.
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| 22. |
- Dobslaw, Felix, 1983-, et al.
(författare)
-
The Gap between Higher Education and the Software Industry - A Case Study on Technology Differences
- 2023
-
Ingår i: ACM International Conference Proceeding Series. - : Association for Computing Machinery (ACM). - 9781450399562 ; , s. 11-21
-
Konferensbidrag (refereegranskat)abstract
- We see an explosive global labour demand in the Software Industry, and higher education institutions play a crucial role in supplying the industry with professionals with relevant education. Existing literature identifies a gap between what software engineering education teaches students and what the software industry demands. Using our open-sourced Job Market AnalyseR (JMAR) text-analysis tool, we compared keywords from higher education course syllabi and job posts to investigate the knowledge gap from a technology-focused departure point. We present a trend analysis of technology in job posts over the past six years in Sweden. We found that demand for cloud and automation technology such as Kubernetes and Docker is rising in job ads but not that much in higher education syllabi. The language used in higher education syllabi and job ads differs where the former emphasizes concepts and the latter technologies more heavily. We discuss possible remedies to bridge this mismatch to draw further conclusions in future work, including calibrating JMAR to other industry-relevant aspects, including soft skills, software concepts, or new demographics.
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| 23. |
- Feldt, Robert, 1972, et al.
(författare)
-
Towards Automated Boundary Value Testing with Program Derivatives and Search
- 2019
-
Ingår i: Lecture Notes in Computer Science (including subseries Lecture Notes in Artificial Intelligence and Lecture Notes in Bioinformatics). - Cham : Springer International Publishing. - 1611-3349 .- 0302-9743. ; 11664, s. 155-163
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Konferensbidrag (refereegranskat)abstract
- A natural and often used strategy when testing software is to use input values at boundaries, i.e. where behavior is expected to change the most, an approach often called boundary value testing or analysis (BVA). Even though this has been a key testing idea for long it has been hard to clearly define and formalize. Consequently, it has also been hard to automate. In this research note we propose one such formalization of BVA by, in a similar way as to how the derivative of a function is defined in mathematics, considering (software) program derivatives. Critical to our definition is the notion of distance between inputs and outputs which we can formalize and then quantify based on ideas from Information theory. However, for our (black-box) approach to be practical one must search for test inputs with specific properties. Coupling it with search-based software engineering is thus required and we discuss how program derivatives can be used as and within fitness functions. This brief note does not allow a deeper, empirical investigation but we use a simple illustrative example throughout to introduce the main ideas. By combining program derivatives with search, we thus propose a practical as well as theoretically interesting technique for automated boundary value (analysis and) testing.
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| 24. |
- Gomes, Francisco, 1987, et al.
(författare)
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Building Collaborative Learning: Exploring Social Annotation in Introductory Programming
- 2024
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Ingår i: Proceedings - International Conference on Software Engineering. - : IEEE Computer Society. - 0270-5257. - 9798400704987 ; , s. 12-21
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Konferensbidrag (refereegranskat)abstract
- The increasing demand for software engineering education presents learning challenges in courses due to the diverse range of topics that require practical applications, such as programming or software design, all of which are supported by group work and interaction. Social Annotation (SA) is an approach to teaching that can enhance collaborative learning among students. In SA, both students and teachers utilize platforms like Feedback Fruits, Perusall, and Diigo to collaboratively annotate and discuss course materials. This approach encourages students to share their thoughts and answers with their peers, fostering a more interactive learning environment. We share our experience of implementing social annotation via Perusall as a preparatory tool for lectures in an introductory programming course aimed at undergraduate students in Software Engineering. We report the impact of Perusall on the examination results of 112 students. Our results show that 81% of students engaged in meaningful social annotation successfully passed the course. Notably, the proportion of students passing the exam tends to rise as they complete more Perusall assignments. In contrast, only 56% of students who did not participate in Perusall discussions managed to pass the exam. We did not enforce mandatory Perusall participation in the course. Yet, the feedback from our course evaluation questionnaire reveals that most students ranked Perusall among their favorite components of the course and that their interest in the subject has increased.
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| 25. |
- Gomes, Francisco, 1987, et al.
(författare)
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Using mutation testing to measure behavioural test diversity
- 2020
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Ingår i: Proceedings - 2020 IEEE 13th International Conference on Software Testing, Verification and Validation Workshops, ICSTW 2020. ; , s. 254-263
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Konferensbidrag (refereegranskat)abstract
- Diversity has been proposed as a key criterion to improve testing effectiveness and efficiency. It can be used to optimise large test repositories but also to visualise test maintenance issues and raise practitioners' awareness about waste in test artefacts and processes. Even though these diversitybased testing techniques aim to exercise diverse behavior in the system under test (SUT), the diversity has mainly been measured on and between artefacts (e.g., inputs, outputs or test scripts). Here, we introduce a family of measures to capture behavioural diversity (b-div) of test cases by comparing their executions and failure outcomes. Using failure information to capture the SUT behaviour has been shown to improve effectiveness of history-based test prioritisation approaches. However, historybased techniques require reliable test execution logs which are often not available or can be difficult to obtain due to flaky tests, scarcity of test executions, etc. To be generally applicable we instead propose to use mutation testing to measure behavioral diversity by running the set of test cases on various mutated versions of the SUT. Concretely, we propose two specific b-div measures (based on accuracy and Matthew's correlation coefficient, respectively) and compare them with artefact-based diversity (a-div) for prioritising the test suites of 6 different open-source projects. Our results show that our b-div measures outperform a-div and random selection in all of the studied projects. The improvement is substantial with an average increase in average percentage of faults detected (APFD) of between 19% to 31% depending on the size of the subset of prioritised tests.
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| 26. |
- Haapasaari Lindgren, Marcus, et al.
(författare)
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COMET : A ML-Based Tool for Evaluating the Effectiveness of Software Design Communication
- 2023
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Ingår i: 2023 ACM/IEEE International Conference on Model Driven Engineering Languages and Systems Companion (MODELS-C). - : IEEE conference proceedings. ; , s. 729-736
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Konferensbidrag (refereegranskat)abstract
- Communication is one of the most demanding activities in software development. The effectiveness of communication can be measured by analyzing three interpersonal communication dimensions: Active Discussion, Creative Conflict, and Conversation Management. Previous work relied on manually labeling the communication dimensions to analyze the effectiveness of software design discussions, a process that is time-consuming and not applicable to real-time use. In this study, natural language processing and supervised machine learning are used to create COMET, a tool for automatic classification and assessment of the effectiveness of interpersonal communication during software design meetings. To determine the optimal classification approach, nine different classifiers are examined. The classifier model that performed the best is Random Forest which managed to achieve 93.66% accuracy, 93.76% precision, and 93.63% recall when trained and tested with a stratified 10-fold cross-validation technique.
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| 27. |
- Hokka, Heidi, et al.
(författare)
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Linking Developer Experience to Coding Style in Open-Source Repositories
- 2021
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Ingår i: 2021 IEEE International Conference on Software Analysis, Evolution and Reengineering (SANER). - : IEEE. - 9781728196305 ; , s. 516-520
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Konferensbidrag (refereegranskat)abstract
- We, humans, gain experience by doing something for a prolonged period. In this paper, we address whether we can link the use of advanced language features in software to a greater developer experience, indicating higher software quality. The coding style we chose to measure is the usage of lambdas and whether it correlates with programming experience since previous research has shown that less experienced C++ developers face difficulties with lambdas despite them being a language feature for almost ten years. If we established that lambda use and developer experience correlate positively, we could further investigate whether a good understanding of lambdas has a lasting contribution to software quality. Further, we could use it as an indicator within code quality metrics and promote the teaching of functional programming and lambda use in software engineering curricula. To measure experience, we introduce the Mean Repository Experience (MRE) metric, a novel but straightforward way of measuring what we here call repository experience, i.e., the combined assessed experience of contributors in a repository. We use this metric to analyze 500 C++ repositories. The proposed MRE metric shows potential as a proxy for software quality and could further extend to advanced language features other than lambdas. Our results suggest that the developer experience positively correlates with lambda usage. Future research includes understanding how well MRE reflects actual developer experience and further implications.
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| 28. |
- Holmberg, Mats, et al.
(författare)
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An Industrial Case-Study on GUI Testing With RPA
- 2022
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Ingår i: 2022 IEEE International Conference on Software Testing, Verification and Validation Workshops (ICSTW). - 9781665496292 ; , s. 199-206
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Konferensbidrag (refereegranskat)abstract
- Automating regression tests can bring many benefits, such as increased testing frequency and improved bug-finding capabilities, leading to an overall positive impact on software quality. However, transitioning manual testing into automated testing is not possible without effort. In this work, we attempted to transition a manual test suite into an automated graphical user interface-based regression test suite using a Robotic Process Automation framework. The study reports on the efforts needed to implement the test suite and test case maintenance efforts. Furthermore, the study reports on bug-finding capabilities and discusses the feasibility of applying Robotic Process Automation for automated graphical user interface-based regression testing more broadly. Due to challenges related to current testing practices within the organization, only a small subset of the manual test cases could be successfully transitioned. The results indicate that the implementation and maintenance efforts patterns are similar to those of previous studies from the literature - even similar benefits and challenges could be observed. These findings suggest that Robotic Process Automation is feasible for graphical user interface-based regression testing, but further (long-term) investigations are needed in this area.
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| 29. |
- Rico, Sergio, 1985-, et al.
(författare)
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Starting Collaborations Between SMEs and Researchers in Software Engineering
- 2023
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Ingår i: Software Business. - : Springer Nature. - 9783031532269 ; , s. 222-230
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Konferensbidrag (refereegranskat)abstract
- In software engineering research, academia-industry collaboration is predominantly understood as partnerships between academic institutions and large companies. Small and Medium-sized Enterprises (SMEs) are vital contributors to the industry, and they are numerous. Their unique preconditions and challenges differentiate their collaboration dynamics from larger corporations. We seek to identify guiding principles and practices for initiating collaborations between researchers and SMEs. Through a meta-synthesis approach drawn from two systematic literature reviews, we introduce a collaborative model canvas. This emphasizes the importance of SMEs’ business contexts and the relationships between researchers and SMEs. Our research offers insights for those looking to collaborate with SMEs, considering potential challenges and limitations.
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| 30. |
- Thilderkvist, Eva, et al.
(författare)
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On current limitations of online eye-tracking to study the visual processing of source code
- 2024
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Ingår i: Information and Software Technology. - : Elsevier BV. - 0950-5849 .- 1873-6025. ; 174
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Context: Eye-tracking is an increasingly popular instrument to study how programmers process and comprehend source code. While most studies are conducted in controlled environments with lab-grade hardware, it would be desirable to simplify and scale participation in experiments for users sitting remotely, leveraging home equipment. Objective: This study investigates the possibility of performing eye-tracking studies remotely using open-source algorithms and consumer-grade webcams. It establishes the technology's current limitations and evaluates the quality of the data collected by it. We conclude by recommending ways forward to address the shortcomings and make remote code-reading studies in support of eye-tracking feasible in the future. Method: We gathered eye-gaze data remotely from 40 participants performing a code reading experiment on a purpose-built web application. The utilized eye-tracker worked client-side and used ridge regression to generate x- and y-coordinates in real-time predicting the participants’ on-screen gaze points without the need to collect and save video footage. We processed and analysed the collected data according to common practices for isolating eye-movement events and deriving metrics used in software engineering eye-tracking studies. In response to the lack of an algorithm explicitly developed for detecting oculomotor fixation events in low-frequency webcam data, we also introduced a dispersion threshold algorithm for that purpose. The quality of the collected data was subsequently assessed to determine the adequacy and validity of the methodology for eye-tracking. Results: The collected data was found to be of varying quality despite extensive calibration and graphical user guidance. We present our results highlighting both the negative and positive observations from which the community hopefully can learn. Both accuracy and precision were low and ultimately deemed insufficient for drawing valid conclusions in a high-precision empirical study. We nonetheless contribute to identifying critical limitations to be addressed in future research. Apart from the overall challenge of vastly diverse equipment, setup, and configuration, we found two main problems with the current webcam eye-tracking technology. The first was the absence of a validated algorithm to isolate fixations in low-frequency data, compromising the assurance of the accuracy of the data derived from it. The second problem was the lack of algorithmic support for head movements when predicting gaze location. Unsupervised participants do not always keep their heads still, even if instructed to do so. Consequently, we frequently observed spatial shifts that corrupted many collected datasets. Three encouraging observations resulted from the study. Even when shifted, gaze points were consistently dispersed in patterns resembling both the shape and size of the stimuli without extreme deviations. We could also distinguish recognizable reading patterns. Linearity was significantly different when participants were reading source code compared to natural text, and we could detect the expected left-to-right and top-to-bottom reading directions for participants reading natural text snippets. Conclusion: The accuracy and precision levels were not sufficient for a word-by-word analysis of code reading but could be adequate for a broader, coarse-grained precision study. Additionally we identified two main issues compromising the collected data validity and contributed a fixation detection algorithm to approach one of these issues. With suitable solutions to the identified issues, remote eye-tracking studies with webcams on code reading could eventually be feasible.
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| 31. |
- Åhs, Fredrik, et al.
(författare)
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Artificial Intelligence Supported Cognitive Behavioral Therapy for Treatment of Speech Anxiety in Virtual Reality Environments
- 2020
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Ingår i: Proceedings of the European Conference on the Impact of Artificial Intelligence and Robotics. - Reading, UK : Academic Conferences and Publishing International Limited. - 9781912764747
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Konferensbidrag (refereegranskat)abstract
- Cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) has become a successful treatment to improve management of stress and anxiety in social situations. One of the most widespread social anxiety disorders is speech anxiety, and there are also studies reporting that speech anxiety is increasing among younger adults. An emerging trend in CBT treatment is virtual reality (VR), a technology that today also could involve the use of artificial intelligence. The aim of this position paper is to present and discuss the idea of using explainable artificial intelligence to improve CBT treatment of speech anxiety in virtual reality environments. The proposed CBT and VR concept builds upon identification of individuals for whom a scientifically grounded treatment can be predicted to have a larger effect than the average. The identification of these individuals should be conducted with the use of Explainable artificial intelligence (XAI). However, the effect of providing XAI-based information on actual treatment outcome has not been fully investigated and established. To better understand how AI-based information can strengthen CBT, it would be valuable to investigate how much confidence individuals undergoing treatment can have in information that is derived from XAI applications. If XAI-derived information is trusted to the same extent as traditional information coming from psychologists, this could open up for CBT design.Furthermore, the VR-treatment should be grounded in learning theory and cognitive psychology with an emphasis on promotion of inhibitory learning. A commercial application should be used for stimuli presentation in the VR-head-set based on various scenarios that simulates real-world situations. The main objective of the VR-treatment is to promote inhibitory learning by disproving catastrophic beliefs through exposure to distressful speech situations. Outcomes of the treatment should primarily be measured by the Public Speaking Anxiety Scale, but also involve an assessment of social anxiety with the use of Liebowitz’s Social Anxiety Scale.
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