Monash University

Leader(s): Sita Ramakrishnan

Offered

Clayton First semester 2009 (Day)

Synopsis

This unit covers the products, processes, techniques and tools for system validation & verifications including acceptance tests. Commercial Testing Tools from Rational, HP and other open-source tools will be used to apply in practice knowledge learnt about software testing from a theoretical perspective. Inspection and testing methodologies, analysis of artifacts, robustness, performance analysis configuration management, quality assurance plan and standards, compliance, assessment, certification issues are covered. It shows how to predict, analyse and control defects in complex software systems.

Objectives

At the completion of this unit students will have knowledge and understanding of:

1. the role of validation & verification methods in the system life cycle;
2. key issues in software testing, testing levels and testing activities;
3. testing techniques based on testers' experience, adhoc testing, exploratory testing, specification-based, equivalence partitioning, boundary-value analysis, finite-state machine based, random testing, code-based, control-flow & data-flow technique, fault-based, error seeding, mutation testing, usage-based, reliability measures, operational profile, based on type of applications, GUI, web based, OO, component testing, testing concurrent/distributed/real-time/embedded systems, selection and combination of techniques;
4. test related measures, evaluation of software under test, fault density, types of faults, evaluation of tests done, criteria such as coverage, thoroughness, mutation core K1.4 Empirical work, replication experiments vs case study.

At the completion of this unit students will have developed attitudes that enable them to:

1. adhere to software quality engineering principles;
2. recognise the importance of adhering to software engineering principles of V&V and standards in the design and development of test methods;
3. have an understanding of inspection and debugging approaches, configuration management, performance, and quality standards issues.

At the completion of this unit students will have the skills to:

1. use open source IDEs such as Eclipse and unit testing & coverage tools such as JUnit and djUnit, commercial validation tools such as TestStudio from Rational and TestDirector from Mercury Interactive, and other similar products to help detect software system projects;
2. test tools from these vendors;
3. appreciate how assertion mechanisms impact reasoning;
4. analyse and control defects in complex systems.

Assessment

Assignment 1: 40%; Assignment 2: 20%; Assignment 3: 20%; Demonstration: 20%

Contact hours

One x 2-hour lecture/week

Prerequisites

CSE2201, CSE2304, CSE2305, CSE3308, BUS2176, CSE23391 or CSE3391, CSE2395 or CSE3395,
or
FIT2004, FIT2024, FIT3042, FIT3077, FIT3086
or enrolled in FIT Masters program at Monash

Prohibitions

CSE4431

Additional information on this unit is available from the faculty at:

http://www.infotech.monash.edu.au/units/fit4004/