Apoiando a construção de testes de aceitação automatizados a partir da especificação de requisitos

Automation has become increasingly necessary during the software test process due to the high cost and time associated with such activity. Some tools have been proposed to automate the execution of Acceptance Tests in Web applications. However, many of them have important limitations such as the strong dependence on the structure of the HTML pages and the need of manual valuing of the test cases. In this work, we present a language for specifying acceptance test scenarios for Web applications called IFL4TCG and a tool that allows the generation of test cases from these scenarios. The proposed language supports the criterion of Equivalence Classes Partition and the tool allows the generation of test cases that meet different combination strategies (i.e., Each-Choice, Base-Choice and All Combinations). In order to evaluate the effectiveness of the proposed solution, we used the language and the associated tool for designing and executing Acceptance Tests on a module of Sistema Unificado de Administração Pública (SUAP) of Instituto Federal Rio Grande do Norte (IFRN). Four Systems Analysts and one Computer Technician, which work as developers of the that system, participated in the evaluation. Preliminary results showed that IFL4TCG can actually help to detect defects in Web applications

Reqsys-MDD: uma ferramenta para mapeamento entre modelos de features e requisitos em linhas de produto de software

The approach Software Product Line (SPL) has become very promising these days, since it allows the production of customized systems on large scale through product families. For the modeling of these families the Features Model is being widely used, however, it is a model that has low level of detail and not may be sufficient to guide the development team of LPS. Thus, it is recommended add the Features Model to other models representing the system from other perspectives. The goals model PL-AOVgraph can assume this role complementary to the Features Model, since it has a to context oriented language of LPS's, which allows the requirements modeling in detail and identification of crosscutting concerns that may arise as result of variability. In order to insert PL-AOVgraph in development of LPS's, this paper proposes a bi-directional mapping between PL-AOVgraph and Features Model, which will be automated by tool ReqSys-MDD. This tool uses the approach of Model-Driven Development (MDD), which allows the construction of systems from high level models through successive transformations. This enables the integration of ReqSys-MDD with other tools MDD that use their output models as input to other transformations. So it is possible keep consistency among the models involved, avoiding loss of informations on transitions between stages of development

X-ARM: um modelo de representação de artefatos de software

A great challenge of the Component Based Development is the creation of mechanisms to facilitate the finding of reusable assets that fulfill the requirements of a particular system under development. In this sense, some component repositories have been proposed in order to answer such a need. However, repositories need to represent the asset characteristics that can be taken into account by the consumers when choosing the more adequate assets for their needs. In such a context, the literature presents some models proposed to describe the asset characteristics, such as identification, classification, non-functional requirements, usage and deployment information and component interfaces. Nevertheless, the set of characteristics represented by those models is insufficient to describe information used before, during and after the asset acquisition. This information refers to negotiation, certification, change history, adopted development process, events, exceptions and so on. In order to overcome this gap, this work proposes an XML-based model to represent several characteristics, of different asset types, that may be employed in the component-based development. Besides representing metadata used by consumers, useful for asset discovering, acquisition and usage, this model, called X-ARM, also focus on helping asset developers activities. Since the proposed model represents an expressive amount of information, this work also presents a tool called X-Packager, developed with the goal of helping asset description with X-ARM

Caracterizando os fluxos excepcionais em linhas de produto de software: um estudo exploratório

The Exception Handling (EH) is a widely used mechanism for building robust systems. In Software Product Line (SPL) context it is not different. As EH mechanisms are embedded in most of mainstream programming languages (like Java, C# and C++), we can find exception signalers and handlers spread over code assets associated to common and variable SPL features. When exception signalers and handlers are added to an SPL in an unplanned way, one of the possible consequences is the generation of faulty family instances (i.e., instances on which common or variable features signal exceptions that are mistakenly caught inside the system). In this context, some questions arise: How exceptions flow between the optional and alternative features an LPS? Aiming at providing answers to these questions, this master thesis conducted an exploratory study, based on code inspection and static analysis code, whose goal was to categorize the main ways which exceptions flow in LPSs. To support the study, we developed an static analysis tool called PLEA (Product Line Exception Analyzer) that calculates the exceptional flows of LPSs, and categorize these flows according to the features associated with handlers and signalers. Preliminary results showed that some types of exceptional flows have more potential to yield failures in exceptional behavior of SLPs

Squid impact analyser: uma ferramenta para análise de impacto de mudança em linhas de produto de software

Software Products Lines (SPL) is a software engineering approach to developing software system families that share common features and differ in other features according to the requested software systems. The adoption of the SPL approach can promote several benefits such as cost reduction, product quality, productivity, and time to market. On the other hand, the SPL approach brings new challenges to the software evolution that must be considered. Recent research work has explored and proposed automated approaches based on code analysis and traceability techniques for change impact analysis in the context of SPL development. There are existing limitations concerning these approaches such as the customization of the analysis functionalities to address different strategies for change impact analysis, and the change impact analysis of fine-grained variability. This dissertation proposes a change impact analysis tool for SPL development, called Squid Impact Analyzer. The tool allows the implementation of change impact analysis based on information from variability modeling, mapping of variability to code assets, and existing dependency relationships between code assets. An assessment of the tool is conducted through an experiment that compare the change impact analysis results provided by the tool with real changes applied to several evolution releases from a SPL for media management in mobile devices

CALV3 - Uma linguagem específica de domínio para segurança em sistemas corporativos: um estudo de caso sistemático na indústria

The academic community and software industry have shown, in recent years, substantial interest in approaches and technologies related to the area of model-driven development (MDD). At the same time, continues the relentless pursuit of industry for technologies to raise productivity and quality in the development of software products. This work aims to explore those two statements, through an experiment carried by using MDD technology and evaluation of its use on solving an actual problem under the security context of enterprise systems. By building and using a tool, a visual DSL denominated CALV3, inspired by the software factory approach: a synergy between software product line, domainspecific languages and MDD, we evaluate the gains in abstraction and productivity through a systematic case study conducted in a development team. The results and lessons learned from the evaluation of this tool within industry are the main contributions of this work

Uma abordagem para a verificação do comportamento excepcional a partir de regras de designe e testes

Checking the conformity between implementation and design rules in a system is an important activity to try to ensure that no degradation occurs between architectural patterns defined for the system and what is actually implemented in the source code. Especially in the case of systems which require a high level of reliability is important to define specific design rules for exceptional behavior. Such rules describe how exceptions should flow through the system by defining what elements are responsible for catching exceptions thrown by other system elements. However, current approaches to automatically check design rules do not provide suitable mechanisms to define and verify design rules related to the exception handling policy of applications. This paper proposes a practical approach to preserve the exceptional behavior of an application or family of applications, based on the definition and runtime automatic checking of design rules for exception handling of systems developed in Java or AspectJ. To support this approach was developed, in the context of this work, a tool called VITTAE (Verification and Information Tool to Analyze Exceptions) that extends the JUnit framework and allows automating test activities to exceptional design rules. We conducted a case study with the primary objective of evaluating the effectiveness of the proposed approach on a software product line. Besides this, an experiment was conducted that aimed to realize a comparative analysis between the proposed approach and an approach based on a tool called JUnitE, which also proposes to test the exception handling code using JUnit tests. The results showed how the exception handling design rules evolve along different versions of a system and that VITTAE can aid in the detection of defects in exception handling code

Sistema de apoio à interatividade em revisões sistemáticas em engenharia de software

A colaboração na pesquisa é uma das tarefas centrais da área acadêmica. Atualmente, muitos pesquisadores estão utilizando meios modernos de troca de arquivos digitais através de ferramentas assíncronas e também com o uso de ferramentas mais sofisticadas, do tipo síncronas. Juntamente com o fato da crescente quantidade de artigos sendo gerados, mais complexos, diversificados e aumentando de forma desorganizada, o que trás ao pesquisador uma tarefa difícil para organizá-los de forma a se extrair o melhor conteúdo destes, isto ocorre porque uma subárea da Engenharia de Software (ES) ainda é bastante mal aproveitada, a Engenharia de Software Experimental (ESE). Utilizando-se de um dos tipos de experimentos que a ESE oferece, as revisões sistemáticas entram como uma solução bastante robusta, na qual o pesquisador pode identificar o conhecimento existente em uma área e planejar devidamente sua pesquisa, evitando a repetição de erros em pesquisas já efetivadas por outros pesquisadores no passado. Contudo, estas duas abordagens, a colaboração virtual de pesquisadores e a utilização de revisões sistemáticas, contem problemas: na primeira, sistemas colaborativos são geralmente difíceis de configurar e usar; na segunda, apesar da robustez da metodologia de revisões sistemáticas, ainda se torna necessário uma rigorosa revisão na literatura para se conseguir um resultado satisfatório. Assim, com o foco de unir estas duas abordagens, este trabalho propõe uma maneira de produzir revisões sistemáticas de forma organizada e com a possibilidade de interação entre usuários, com o desenvolvimento de um sistema interativo, no qual as revisões sistemáticas possam ser geradas por usuários em colaboração com outros e também ser avaliadas seguindo a orientação de um profissional da área, tornando o seu conteúdo mais consistente e de melhor qualidade. O sistema não possui níveis de acesso, ou seja, qualquer pessoa pode se cadastrar e usufruir de seus recursos, seja na área acadêmica ou mesmo na área profissional

POPT: uma abordagem de ensino de programação orientada a problema e testes

There is a growing interest of the Computer Science education community for including testing concepts on introductory programming courses. Aiming at contributing to this issue, we introduce POPT, a Problem-Oriented Programming and Testing approach for Introductory Programming Courses. POPT main goal is to improve the traditional method of teaching introductory programming that concentrates mainly on implementation and neglects testing. POPT extends POP (Problem Oriented Programing) methodology proposed on the PhD Thesis of Andrea Mendonça (UFCG). In both methodologies POPT and POP, students skills in dealing with ill-defined problems must be developed since the first programming courses. In POPT however, students are stimulated to clarify ill-defined problem specifications, guided by de definition of test cases (in a table-like manner). This paper presents POPT, and TestBoot a tool developed to support the methodology. In order to evaluate the approach a case study and a controlled experiment (which adopted the Latin Square design) were performed. In an Introductory Programming course of Computer Science and Software Engineering Graduation Programs at the Federal University of Rio Grande do Norte, Brazil. The study results have shown that, when compared to a Blind Testing approach, POPT stimulates the implementation of programs of better external quality the first program version submitted by POPT students passed in twice the number of test cases (professor-defined ones) when compared to non-POPT students. Moreover, POPT students submitted fewer program versions and spent more time to submit the first version to the automatic evaluation system, which lead us to think that POPT students are stimulated to think better about the solution they are implementing. The controlled experiment confirmed the influence of the proposed methodology on the quality of the code developed by POPT students

Geração de testes a partir de gramáticas: áreas de aplicação

The work proposed by Cleverton Hentz (2010) presented an approach to define tests from the formal description of a program s input. Since some programs, such as compilers, may have their inputs formalized through grammars, it is common to use context-free grammars to specify the set of its valid entries. In the original work the author developed a tool that automatically generates tests for compilers. In the present work we identify types of problems in various areas where grammars are used to describe them , for example, to specify software configurations, which are potential situations to use LGen. In addition, we conducted case studies with grammars of different domains and from these studies it was possible to evaluate the behavior and performance of LGen during the generation of sentences, evaluating aspects such as execution time, number of generated sentences and satisfaction of coverage criteria available in LGen

BTS:uma ferramenta de suporte ao desenvolvimento sistemático de sistemas confiáveis baseados em componentes

The component-based development of systems revolutionized the software development process, facilitating the maintenance, providing more confiability and reuse. Nevertheless, even with all the advantages of the development of components, their composition is an important concern. The verification through informal tests is not enough to achieve a safe composition, because they are not based on formal semantic models with which we are able to describe precisally a system s behaviour. In this context, formal methods provide ways to accurately specify systems through mathematical notations providing, among other benefits, more safety. The formal method CSP enables the specification of concurrent systems and verification of properties intrinsic to them, as well as the refinement among different models. Some approaches apply constraints using CSP, to check the behavior of composition between components, assisting in the verification of those components in advance. Hence, aiming to assist this process, considering that the software market increasingly requires more automation, reducing work and providing agility in business, this work presents a tool that automatizes the verification of composition among components, in which all complexity of formal language is kept hidden from users. Thus, through a simple interface, the tool BST (BRIC-Tool-Suport) helps to create and compose components, predicting, in advance, undesirable behaviors in the system, such as deadlocks

Implementação da técnica de software pipelining na rede em chip IPNoSyS

Alongside the advances of technologies, embedded systems are increasingly present in our everyday. Due to increasing demand for functionalities, many tasks are split among processors, requiring more efficient communication architectures, such as networks on chip (NoC). The NoCs are structures that have routers with channel point-to-point interconnect the cores of system on chip (SoC), providing communication. There are several networks on chip in the literature, each with its specific characteristics. Among these, for this work was chosen the Integrated Processing System NoC (IPNoSyS) as a network on chip with different characteristics compared to general NoCs, because their routing components also accumulate processing function, ie, units have functional able to execute instructions. With this new model, packets are processed and routed by the router architecture. This work aims at improving the performance of applications that have repetition, since these applications spend more time in their execution, which occurs through repeated execution of his instructions. Thus, this work proposes to optimize the runtime of these structures by employing a technique of instruction-level parallelism, in order to optimize the resources offered by the architecture. The applications are tested on a dedicated simulator and the results compared with the original version of the architecture, which in turn, implements only packet level parallelism

O problema do Hiker Dice em tabuleiro compacto: um estudo algorítmico

The Hiker Dice was a game recently proposed in a software designed by Mara Kuzmich and Leonardo Goldbarg. In the game a dice is responsible for building a trail on an n x m board. As the dice waits upon a cell on the board, it prints the side that touches the surface. The game shows the Hamiltonian Path Problem Simple Maximum Hiker Dice (Hidi-CHS) in trays Compact Nth , this problem is then characterized by looking for a Hamiltonian Path that maximize the sum of marked sides on the board. The research now related, models the problem through Graphs, and proposes two classes of solution algorithms. The first class, belonging to the exact algorithms, is formed by a backtracking algorithm planed with a return through logical rules and limiting the best found solution. The second class of algorithms is composed by metaheuristics type Evolutionary Computing, Local Ramdomized search and GRASP (Greed Randomized Adaptative Search). Three specific operators for the algorithms were created as follows: restructuring, recombination with two solutions and random greedy constructive.The exact algorithm was teste on 4x4 to 8x8 boards exhausting the possibility of higher computational treatment of cases due to the explosion in processing time. The heuristics algorithms were tested on 5x5 to 14x14 boards. According to the applied methodology for evaluation, the results acheived by the heuristics algorithms suggests a better performance for the GRASP algorithm

Geração de interfaces de usuário de sistemas Web para múltiplos dispositivos com o uso de componentes de IU

This work presents an User Interface (UI) prototypes generation process to the softwares that has a Web browser as a plataform. This process uses UI components more complex than HTML elements. To described this components more complex this work suggest to use the XICL (eXtensinble User Interface Components Language). XICL is a language, based on XML syntax, to describe UI Components and IUs. XICL promotes extensibility and reusability in the User Interface development process. We have developed two compiler. The first one compiles IMML (Interactive Message Modeling Language) code and generates XICL code. The second one compiles XICL code and generates DHTML code

Um estudo dos sistemas de amortizações SAC e francês no ensino médio apoiado na construção de planilhas Eletrônicas

The aim of this work is to provide a text to support interested in the main systems of amortization of the current market: Constant Amortization System (SAC) and French System, also known as Table Price. We will use spreadsheets to facilitate calculations involving handling exponential and decimal. Based on [12], we show that the parcels of the SAC become smaller than the French system after a certain period. Further then that, we did a comparison to show that the total amount paid by SAC is less than the French System