COINSE

CS453 Automated Software Testing, Spring 2020

Lectures

Time: 10:30-11:45, Mondays and Wednesdays Location: N1, Room 111

The classes will indefinitely be held using zoom (https://zoom.us). You can find the link on KLMS.

Exams and Grades

Please refer to the announcement made on 20th April.

Lecturer

Shin Yoo shin.yoo@kaist.ac.kr Office: E3-1 Room 2405

Communication

All class announcements, as well as Q&A, will take place using a dedicated Slack workspace. You are required to join cs453-2020.slack.com if you want to continue this course. It is strongly recommended that you install either a desktop or a mobile client, to get notifications. Email the lecturer or one of the TAs to get the invitation link, if you do not have one. When you sign up, please set your username as your real first name, followed by “(your student id number)”. For example, “Shin (20201234)”.”

Syllabus

This course is concerned with a broad range of software testing techniques, with a heavy emphasis on automation, tools, and frameworks, as well as the research outputs behind them. The topic will include, but are not limited to: black box testing/combinatorial testing, random testing, concepts of coverage, structural testing, mutation testing, regression testing, testability transformation, automated debugging, etc.

Prerequisite

  • Strong programming skills: you are required to actively contribute to group and individual project, which involves serious implementation. There will be also a number of hands-on sessions where we will program together during the class.
  • Unix/Linux-savvy: you should be familiar with the usual build tools and Unix/Linux command line environments.
  • Git-aware: you will be required to submit a github repository as part of your project deliverable.
  • Ideally, CS350 Introduction to Software Engineering.
  • Also, ideally, a laptop you can bring to the classroom. If this becomes a problem, let me know.

Evaluation

  • Coursework: 25%
  • Midterm Exam: 30%
  • Project: 25%
  • Quiz: 10%
  • Class Participation: 10%

Teaching Assistant

References

We do not have a textbook per se, and the course will be based on slides and other reading material that are deemed appropriate. However, if you want to get broader sense for some of the topics dealt by this course, I recommend the following books and publications.

Lecture Schedule

I had two conference trips to make in Spring 2020, but both have been rescheduled due to public health concerns. In previous years, we usually made up for the lost time by allocating extra hours to give all project teams enough time to present - this time, we won’t have to do that. CS453 will run a flexible schedule and finish wiehin 14 weeks in Spring 2020.

Assignments

Project Aim

All teams should develop and/or implement an automated software testing technique based on an idea discussed during the course. I would encourage teams to pursue a novel idea, but a faithful reproduction of a state-of-the-art technique with solid evaluation would also do. If you are uncertain about your team’s idea, I will be happy to discuss it.

Proposal

All teams will give a presentation on 20th and 22nd April to explain their project topics. I expect three things to be described clearly in the talk:

  • A testing problem the team aims to solve
  • The technique the team is proposing
  • A way of evaluation to show the proposed technique works and is competent

Paper Presentation

All teams also should prepare a 30 minute presentation about a paper. Choose the paper your group wants to present, from the Reading List on this page, and let the lecturer/TAs know by 22nd April 2020.

Team Project Deliverables

Each team should submit the following:

  • the team report

  • the implementation: a public repository link in the report (e.g. github or bitbucket repo) The team report should include:

  • a precise description of the problem you attempted to solve
  • a clear description of how you tried to solve the problem
  • a result of experimental comparison of before and after: in other words, what benefits did your solution bring?

Additionally, each individual member should submit a separate individual report via KLMS:

  • details of what you have contributed to the project
  • peer assessment of your team members (yourself not included)

The submission deadline is 24th June, 6pm, GMT+9. Since there is also an indivudla report, everyone should submit a zip file that contains both the group and the individual report into KLMS.

The final presentation dates for teams have been announced in the schedule section. Each team will have 20 minutes. If your team is scheduled on the early date, you can just report the progress up to that point, with a clear plan for the remaining work.

Teams

Form your teams by 6th April - write down the member names in the Google Sheet document (link will be available from the Slack workspace).

Examples from the previous years

I’ve picked a few projects from 2019 that I thought was interesting below.

Paper List