Surfing the net for software engineering notes

Development of HL7 v2 data exchange interface specifi ca ons has long been problema c, plagued with ambiguous and inconsistent requirement specifi ca ons.This situa on leads to poten al misinterpreta on by implementers, thus limi ng the eff ec veness of the specifi ca on and crea ng ar fi cial and unnecessary barriers to interoperability.Likewise, the ability to test implementa ons eff ec vely for conformance to the specifi ca ons is hindered.The current approach of specifi ca on development and test plan crea on relies on word processing tools, meaning implementers and testers must read and interpret the informa on in these documents and then translate it into machine-computable requirements and test asser ons.This approach is error prone-a be er methodology is needed.We present a set of produc vity tools in an integrated pla orm that allow users to defi ne and constrain HL7 v2 specifi ca ons and to develop test plans that result in machine-computable ar facts.A tes ng infrastructure and framework subsequently uses these ar facts to create conformance tes ng tools automa cally.We present and demonstrate the u lity of a pla orm for developing specifi ca ons, wri ng test plans, and crea ng tes ng tools.The value proposi on of this end-to-end methodology is explained for authors wri ng HL7 v2 specifi ca ons, for developers implemen ng interfaces, and for testers crea ng valida on tools.

One of the main concerns in the software industry continues to be the development of high quality software. This concern will be exacerbated as software systems become more complex. The training of software developers continues to grow in academia since more institutions are offering software engineering (SE) courses. However, the list of topics that are expected to be covered in this course leaves little or no time for topics that focus on developing quality software, such as software testing and the use of testing tools.In this paper we describe an approach that non-intrusively integrates the use of software testing tools in SE courses. The cornerstone of our approach is the interaction students have with a Web-Based Repository of Software Testing Tools (WReSTT) that contains tutorials on testing concepts and testing tools. WReSTT employs both collaborative learning and social networking features that are attractive to students. We present the results of preliminary study performed in two SE courses that show how using the resources in WReSTT can potentially impact the students' understanding of software testing and the use of testing tools.

In the product development process, test planning can be a time-consuming task, in particular, the test methods for product reliability are usually selected manually because many documents must be referred to when selecting suitable test methods. To make this process more efficient, we have been researched methods to support test planning. In this paper a new automatic selection method for test plans is proposed. The proposed method makes use of information pertaining to cases of failure. We describe a method for searching for failure cases among products having similar attributes for a product currently under consideration. The main principle of this method consists in automated acquisition of names describing the product’s constituent components for use in the search process. Experimental results show that the proposed method delivers a greater degree of acquisition performance, precision, and recall in acquiring names of components compared with a previously proposed method.

NASA's planned Lunar missions will involve multiple NASA centers where each participating center has a specific role and specialization. In this vision, the Constellation program (CxP)'s Distributed System Integration Laboratories (DSIL) architecture consist of multiple System Integration Labs (SILs), with simulators, emulators, testlabs and control centers interacting with each other over a broadband network to perform test and verification for mission scenarios. To support the end-to-end simulation and emulation effort of NASA' exploration initiatives, different NASA centers are interconnected to participate in distributed simulations. Currently, DSIL has interconnections among the following NASA centers: Johnson Space Center (JSC), Kennedy Space Center (KSC), Marshall Space Flight Center (MSFC) and Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL). Through interconnections and interactions among different NASA centers, critical resources and data can be shared, while independent simulations can be performed simultaneously at different NASA locations, to effectively utilize the simulation and emulation capabilities at each center. Furthermore, the development of DSIL can maximally leverage the existing project simulation and testing plans. In this work, we describe the specific role and development activities at JPL for Space Communications and Navigation Network (SCaN) simulator using the Multi-mission Advanced Communications Hybrid Environment for Test and Evaluation (MACHETE) tool to simulate communications effects among mission assets. Using MACHETE, different space network configurations among spacecrafts and ground systems of various parameter sets can be simulated. Data that is necessary for tracking, navigation, and guidance of spacecrafts such as Crew Exploration Vehicle (CEV), Crew Launch Vehicle (CLV), and Lunar Relay Satellite (LRS) and orbit calculation data are disseminated to different NASA centers and updated periodically using the High Level Architecture (HLA). In addition, the performance of DSIL under different traffic loads with different mix of data and priorities are evaluated.

The need for flexibility in application development by minimizing the constraints of a server production environment makes n-tier architectures increasingly used. This architecture is implemented in the form of middleware or often called API. REST API is an API architecture that is currently the most widely used for middleware-based application development.
 PHP is an easy-to-use programming language for developing REST APIs with its microframework. Each microframework has features such as database connection handling, URL routing, and performance is the top one. The large number of PHP microframeworks with different performance issues makes the selection of API-based application development cores very important. Especially if it is projected to handle data exchange or client requests in large numbers. As a basis for selection, performance testing needs to be carried out on each microframework to determine its suitability for API-based application development.
 Performance testing uses the load testing method and develops the popular PHP microframework as a basis for creating test applications. The microframework includes FatFree, Lumen, Phalcon-micro, and Slim. Testing is carried out systematically using a test plan that has been designed for performance testing needs. The focus is to analyze the RPS (Request Per Seconds) and latency to the percentile that the wrk2 test tool generates on a predetermined test type

Polymer composite honeycomb sandwich panels (PCHSPs) are used in many sectors of industry, such as in aerospace, defense and public transport factory. Sandwich panels consist of two facing skins and the core. Products of all industry sectors have to meet requirements on their dependability. This research paper deals with a proposal of the most appropriate methodology for dependability testing of PCHSPs products used in transport industry. Dependability is a global concept that includes terms such as availability, reliability, durability, maintainability, supportability, etc. The experiments have shown S-N curves with damages and without damages of PCHSPs. An important part of dependability is to be fonded the limit states of the studied object, which are for PCHSPs are characterized by fiber cracking and (core) delamination. Dependability evaluation consists of analysis and tests. For every test, it is necessary to be developed its test plan. Facing skin components of the sandwich panels may particularly be damaged. There are several methods of non-destructive testing, which can be used to determine the damage of facing skins of sandwich panels. Infrared thermography (IRNDT) is one of them. IRNDT utilizes thermo-physical properties of the materials, including thermal diffusivity.

The Hanford Tank Waste Treatment and Immobilization Plant (WTP) is being constructed to treat the 56 million gallons of radioactive waste stored in 177 underground tanks at the Hanford Site. The WTP includes a pretreatment facility to separate the wastes into high-level waste (HLW) and low-activity waste (LAW) fractions for vitrification and disposal. The LAW will be converted to glass for final disposal at the Integrated Disposal Facility (IDF). Cast Stone – a cementitious waste form, has been selected for solidification of this secondary waste stream after treatment in the ETF. The secondary-waste Cast Stone waste form must be acceptable for disposal in the IDF. This secondary waste Cast Stone waste form qualification testing plan outlines the testing of the waste form and immobilization process to demonstrate that the Cast Stone waste form can comply with the disposal requirements. Specifications for the secondary-waste Cast Stone waste form have not been established. For this testing plan, Cast Stone specifications are derived from specifications for the immobilized LAW glass in the WTP contract, the waste acceptance criteria for the IDF, and the waste acceptance criteria in the IDF Permit issued by the State of Washington. This testing plan outlines the testing needed to demonstrate that the waste form can comply with these waste form specifications and acceptance criteria. The testing program must also demonstrate that the immobilization process can be controlled to consistently provide an acceptable waste form product. This testing plan also outlines the testing needed to provide the technical basis for understanding the long-term performance of the waste form in the disposal environment. These waste form performance data are needed to support performance assessment analyses of the long-term environmental impact of the secondary-waste Cast Stone waste form in the IDF

It is imperative to safeguard computer applications and information systems against the growing number of cyber-attacks. Automated software testing can be a promising solution to quickly analyze many lines of code and detect vulnerabilities and possible attack vectors by generating function-specific testing data. This process draws similarities to the constrained adversarial examples generated by adversarial learning methods, so there could be significant benefits to the integration of these methods in testing tools. Therefore, this literature review is focused on the current state-of-the-art of constrained data generation methods applied for adversarial learning and software testing, aiming to guide researchers and developers to enhance software testing tools with adversarial testing methods and improve the resilience and robustness of their information systems. The found constrained data generation applications were systematized, and the advantages and limitations of approaches specific for white-box, grey-box, and black-box testing were analyzed, identifying research gaps and opportunities to improve automated testing tools with data generated by adversarial attacks.

Chromogenic reagents based on covalent and non-covalent immobilization of benzidine on cellulose and silica gels have been developed and investigated. New test tools and test methods have been elaborated for the determination of chlorine in the concentration range of 0.05–120 mg/L.

For many years Medical Physicists have evaluated image quality performance on all medical imaging modalities, except radiographic systems. We have looked at resolution and contrast on MRI, CT, fluoroscopic systems, ultrasound systems, and nuclear medicine cameras; but rarely radiographic equipment, especially those having screen‐film receptors. With the increased presence of flat panel digital radiographic systems, which have dedicated detectors as an integral component, it is appropriate for the Medical Physicist to include an analysis of detail and contrast sensitivity as part of acceptance and routine annual testing. Some vendors provide automated QA hardware and software tools, but these may not give standard results for adequate monitoring. Using commonly available test tools, resolution and contrast sensitivity can be evaluated on each system. Patient radiation dosimetry can also be evaluated for manual and automatic techniques. Test methods and typical results will be presented, which should help the clinical Medical Physicist to monitor and maintain good image quality performance.Educational Objectives:1. The participant will learn simple test methods to evaluate image quality performance on flat panel detectors.2. Typical and expected results will be presented to provide the participant with thresholds of acceptance.

User requirements are the building blocks for development of software applications. User requirements decide the width and breadth of any software. Nowadays, test scenarios are prepared from the user requirements, which give the test engineers ample scope to review the test plan thoroughly before doing software testing. Regression testing is carried out to know the effect of requirement changes on the functionalities and performance of the software. Test scenario prioritization, which is one of the techniques to perform regression testing, maximizes the ease of debugging for the system under test. The code based test scenario prioritization and model based test scenario prioritization have their own limitations. So, to achieve ease of debugging and to get more time for reviewing the test plans, researchers are now working on test scenario prioritization using requirements collected from the end users. In this paper, we propose an approach named Requirement based test scenario prioritization to prioritize test scenarios using requirements collected from end users for developing software applications. The user’s functional requirements are collected and is assigned with some weight depending upon different factors like complexity of implementing the requirements, type of release of the requirements, requirement volatility, coupling between requirements etc. Test scenarios are generated from requirements collected from the end users. Then, the final priority weight of each test scenario is found out by considering the weight of each requirement covered by the corresponding test scenario and the percentage of requirements coverage made by each test scenario. The test scenarios are prioritized based on the final priority weight. The proposed approach is evaluated using average percentage of fault detection metric and is found to be very efficient in early test scenario prioritization and detection of faults.

The plasma Interaction Test performed on two space station solar array panels is addressed. This includes a discussion of the test requirements, test plan, experimental set-up, and test results. It was found that parasitic current collection was insignificant (0.3 percent of the solar array delivered power). The measured arcing threshold ranged from -210 to -457 V with respect to the plasma potential. Furthermore, the dynamic response of the panels showed the panel time constant to range between 1 and 5 microsec, and the panel capacitance to be between .01 and .02 microF.

The Wellsite Information Transfer Standard Markup Language (WITSML) was developed to provide a common data- exchange format, so that drilling data can be used confidently in various domain/business tasks such as drilling optimization, formation evaluation, or safety-related operations, such as real-time pore pressure analysis. WITSML consists of XML data- object definitions and a Web service specification that allow client software applications to store and retrieve information to/from WITSML servers. A key requirement for interoperability is for WITSML servers to behave consistently in how they interpret and processes data. To help ensure interoperability, certification for WITSML servers has been available for several years. However, for various reasons, these certification processes were not widely adopted, and inconsistency in WITSML server behavior exists. A new, behavior-based, fit-for-purpose certification process for WITSML servers (version 1.4.1 and higher) is being developed to address these issues. Key to this process is an open source testing tool that automates running a suite of tests, which use standard WITSML queries, data-object definitions, and behaviors defined in the WITSML specification. If a server passes all of the required tests, then it is WITSML certified. A company that wants to have its WITSML server tested and certified may download the test tool, test suite, and associated data to first test its server in its own environment, before submitting to official testing (which is conducted by Energistics, the vendor-neutral organization that stewards the standards development process). This paper describes how the testing processes and related technology were developed and are being implemented. This transparent process and behavior-based, automated, and repeatable testing are expected to deliver the ease-of-use and reliable results needed to drive certification, ultimately improving the interoperability and data reliability provided by WITSML. The testing tool, tests, and processes were developed by the Certification Group of the WITSML Special Interest Group, which comprises representatives from service companies and operators.

Valve wear has been identified as a major durability problem in natural gas fueled reciprocating engines. Over the years, progress has been made to alleviate this problem through improved valve design and materials development. Recently high performance ceramics have shown promise for wear component applications. This paper presents the results of a valve train component materials investigation supported by the Gas Research Institute. Testing tools and methods are described. The testing program culminated in a 300 hour component test in a full size turbocharged natural gas engine. Results of the engine test appeared to confirm preceding laboratory tests.

Welcome to the DATE 08 Conference Proceedings. DATE combines the world's favourite electronic systems design conference and Europe's leading international exhibition for electronic design, automation and test, from system level hardware and software implementation right down to integrated circuit design. The DATE 08 event features a technical program with 77 sessions covering the latest developments in system design and embedded software, IC design/test methodologies and EDA tools, together with an exhibition with the leading EDA, silicon and IP providers showing their new products and services. Challenges that you all face or soon will face in your daily practice are the increasing design complexity of highly integrated systems, the introduction of reconfigurability and embedded software, and the control of power and variability in nanometer IC designs. All these issues will be addressed in this year's DATE event. For the 11th successive year DATE has prepared an exciting technical programme, with the help of the more than 400 members of the Technical Programme Committee, who dedicated their time to thoroughly review the 839 submissions in 37 topics, ranging from system level down to circuit design and covering all the most relevant application domains. The submissions are organised in 4 major areas: D --- Design Methods, Tools, Algorithms and Languages A --- Application Design T --- Test Methods, Tools and Innovative Experiences E --- Embedded Software After a thorough review and selection process (with an average of 5 reviews per paper), finally 198 regular papers were selected for presentation at the conference. Additionally, there are 46 Interactive Presentations that are organised in 5 IP sessions. Together with the invited special sessions (panels, embedded tutorials and hot topic sessions), this has resulted in a high-quality technical program. The technical program provides a wide but high-quality coverage of design, design automation and test topics, from the system level to the integrated circuit level. Compared with previous years, submissions in the Embedded Software track has increased by 50%, showing a clear trend towards a comprehensive system design focus with integrated hardware and software solutions. DATE has established itself firmly as a true Electronic System Design Conference. This year the conference is held in Germany, at the ICM in Munich and spans an entire working week from Monday March 10 to Friday March 14. On Monday, eleven pre-conference tutorials will be given. The three-full day tutorials cover topics of great interest for system design. The first tutorial deals with techniques to automatically realising embedded system from high-level functional models. The second tutorial addresses the different issues related to communication based design and architectures in automotive electronic systems. The third tutorial discusses several key concepts on system-level design and application mapping for wireless and multimedia MPSoC architectures. Furthermore, eight half-day tutorials are also given, which cover a wide spectrum of topics on specification, modelling, design and test. The main conference opens on Tuesday March 11, with two very interesting and complementary keynote speeches. Dominique Vernay, Chief Technical Officer for Thales, will talk about the challenges of embedded systems design, and Giovanni de Micheli, Professor at EPFL, will present his views on designing micro/nano systems for a safer and healthier tomorrow. On the same day, the Executive Track offers a series of business panels with executives discussing hot topics in design: the perils of 45 nanometers, the changes in EDA strategies from IDM, to fablite to fabless, and embedded systems level design strategies. DATE 08 will again offer two specific days related to special themes. On Wednesday March 12, a special full-day track is devoted to Automotive Electronics---Software and Architecture. This special-day track will focus on the challenges faced by the automotive supply chain with particular attention to system and software architecture design. It provides a comprehensive analysis of the evolution of automotive architectures, including ECUs, sensors and communication standards and discusses how new methods, tools and standards for interoperability and component-based design can deal with the increasing complexity of software systems and their need for reliability and guaranteed timely behaviour. In addition, it addresses to what degree existing standards, including AUTOSAR and FLEXRAY and model-based development, can support the development of safety and time-critical software. On Thursday March 13, a second special full-day track focuses on Dependable Embedded Systems. This track will address both conceptual and applied issues for design, analysis and validation of dependable embedded systems. The utility of embedded systems and services is based, in large part, on our depending on their sustained functionality in spite of the encountered operational or malicious disruptions. As the number of transient and also permanent disruptions (given the decreasing device geometries, higher device density, lower voltage latching, faster clocks etc) is expected to increase substantially, this will not only be a key issue for the hardware community but also the systems community in general. Solutions using a combination of hardware and software might be more effective than hardware-only or software-only solutions. This track focuses on both conceptual and applied issues for design, analysis and validation of dependable embedded systems. Besides these special tracks, the main conference is organized in six parallel tracks of sessions, three devoted to design methods, tools, algorithms and languages, one to application design, one to test methods, tools and innovative experiences, and finally one to embedded software. The presentations of the selected regular papers in these parallel tracks are complemented by nine Special Sessions and two Invited Industrial Sessions. The special sessions are organized in the form of panels, hot topics, and embedded tutorials. The topics to be covered include quantitative evaluation for embedded systems design, design and manufacturing at 32 and 22nm, software for wireless networked embedded systems, test challenges for low power devices, quantitative productivity measurement in IC design, and 3D Integration. The two invited industrial sessions deal with industrial system designs in transportation and information technologies. To emphasise that DATE is the major event for the designers, DATE 08 features also invited sessions where Europe's famous consumer industry presents their best designs and design practices. Friday March 14 is the day for the DATE workshops. DATE 08 offers workshops on current and emerging important issues in design, test, EDA and software to complement the regular conference. They provide a unique opportunity for the various research and design communities to spend a day discussing the latest and the best, sharing their experiences and visions. This year's workshop program includes eight workshop themes. Four workshops are related to software engineering, ranging from dependable software to modelling, analysis and development tools. Four other workshop themes cover a variety of topics such as the impact of process variations on design and test, the merging world of Nano-Electro-Mechanical Systems, new directions in high level synthesis, and heterogeneous reconfigurable hardware. Each workshop features presentations, invited or submitted, from highly distinguished academic and industrial researchers. Finally, throughout the conference days, DATE offers a comprehensive overview of commercial design and verification tools in its large exhibition hall. Exhibitors include EDA vendors, silicon, FPGA and IP providers showing their new products and services. In addition, there is an Exhibition Theatre featuring talks from engineering managers of the leading electronic manufacturers on first-hand design experiences of commercial EDA tools. New this year is the European projects village where different European and large government funded projects will be able to show their ongoing research and results to the design community and have the opportunity for internal meetings and discussions. The DATE week will be also an opportunity for students and universities to show their research work, through the PhD Forum on Monday evening and the University Booth where hardware and software demonstrations will be shown by different universities on a rotation schedule. The DATE 08 event's program will be particularly attractive to industrial designers, at analog, IC, FPGA and embedded system level, as well as software designers, to researchers and academics as well as to design managers, and an increasing attendance is expected. We therefore invite you to take full advantage of the many opportunities offered to you by DATE 08, to extend your knowledge and/or business in electronic system's design and to exploit the abundant networking possibilities offered to socialise with colleagues, including fringe meetings and a memorable social party with bands and dancing. We hope that you will all enjoy the DATE 08 Conference and Exhibition.