Automated robustness testing of off-the-shelf software components. Kropp, N. P, Koopman, P. J, & Siewiorek, D. P In Digest of Papers. Twenty-Eighth Annual International Symposium on Fault-Tolerant Computing (Cat. No.98CB36224), pages 230–239, 1998. IEEE.
doi  abstract   bibtex   
Mission-critical system designers may have to use a commercial off-the-shelf (COTS) approach to reduce costs and shorten development time, even though COTS software components may not specifically be designed for robust operation. Automated testing can assess component robustness without sacrificing the advantages of a COTS approach. This paper describes the Ballista methodology for scalable, portable, automated robustness testing of component interfaces. An object-oriented approach based on parameter data types rather than component functionality essentially eliminates the need for function-specific test scaffolding. A full-scale implementation that automatically tests the robustness of 233 operating system software components has been ported to ten POSIX systems. Between 42% and 63% of components tested had robustness problems, with a normalized failure rate ranging from 10% to 23% of tests conducted. Robustness testing could be used by developers to measure and improve robustness, or by consumers to compare the robustness of competing COTS component libraries.
@InProceedings{kropp98automated,
  author       = {Kropp, Nathan P and Koopman, Philip J and Siewiorek, Daniel P},
  title        = {Automated robustness testing of off-the-shelf software components},
  booktitle    = {Digest of Papers. Twenty-Eighth Annual International Symposium on Fault-Tolerant Computing (Cat. No.98CB36224)},
  year         = {1998},
  date         = {1998-06},
  eventtitle   = {Digest of Papers. Twenty-Eighth Annual International Symposium on Fault-Tolerant Computing (Cat. No.98CB36224)},
  organization = {IEEE},
  pages        = {230--239},
  doi          = {10.1109/FTCS.1998.689474},
  abstract     = {Mission-critical system designers may have to use a commercial off-the-shelf ({COTS}) approach to reduce costs and shorten development time, even though {COTS} software components may not specifically be designed for robust operation. Automated testing can assess component robustness without sacrificing the advantages of a {COTS} approach. This paper describes the Ballista methodology for scalable, portable, automated robustness testing of component interfaces. An object-oriented approach based on parameter data types rather than component functionality essentially eliminates the need for function-specific test scaffolding. A full-scale implementation that automatically tests the robustness of 233 operating system software components has been ported to ten {POSIX} systems. Between 42\% and 63\% of components tested had robustness problems, with a normalized failure rate ranging from 10\% to 23\% of tests conducted. Robustness testing could be used by developers to measure and improve robustness, or by consumers to compare the robustness of competing {COTS} component libraries.},
  file         = {:kropp98automated - Automated robustness testing of off-the-shelf software components.pdf:PDF},
  groups       = {fault injection, dump},
  keywords     = {Application software, automated robustness testing, Automatic testing, automatic test software, Ballista methodology, commercial off-the-shelf software components, component interface testing, component robustness, Computer crashes, Costs, {COTS} component libraries, Design engineering, failure rate, Mission critical systems, mission-critical systems design, object-oriented approach, object-oriented programming, operating system software, parameter data types, {POSIX} systems, program testing, Robustness, safety-critical software, scalable portable testing, software fault tolerance, software libraries, Software packages, software portability, Software testing, subroutines, Systems engineering and theory, Unix, Vehicle crash testing},
  timestamp    = {2018-01-18},
}

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