Nancy J. Wahl

An overview of regression testing

Regression testing is an important part of the software development life cycle. Many articles have been published lately detailing the different approaches. This article is an overview of regression testing in the following areas: types of regression testing; unit, integration and system level testing, regression testing of global variables, regression testing of object-oriented software, comparisons of selective regression techniques, and cost comparisons of the types of regression testing.

Gender differences in personality components of computer science students: a test of Holland's congruence hypothesis

The problem of disproportional representation of females in computer science curricula was examined in the context of Hollands theory of vocational personality. It was hypothesized that some combination of standardized mathematical aptitude and congruence would significantly predict achievement and persistence in computer science.

Software testing: a machine learning experiment

Testing is a critical part of the somare development process. As the cost of so&are development has escalated, attempts to accurately estimate the cost (and time) of so&are testing have become more important. Research is being done to predict soware development costs and to develop tools to help in cost estimations. In this research, machine learning techniques are applied to determine which sojlware testing attributes are important in predicting soBware testing costs and more specifically soflware testing time. Testing data on 25 sofrware projects were collected. Using this database, a machine karning system identifies the factors that affect testing time by creating a classification tree in which nodes share similar values. By analyzing the classification tree we are able to determine the salient factors which placed a program into its group. 77ze factors that we consider include code complexity measures, measures of programmer and tester experience, measures of the use of sohare engineering principles such as structured programming techniques, andstatistics collected during actual testing of the projects. ‘Ihe programs in a node have an average testing time that is reflective of any program whose attributes would place it into this group. Thus, the tree can be used, among other things, to predict testing time. PariialIy suFFo& by NSF Iu-Grant DUE-9352219. Permission to copy without fee all or part of this material is granted provided that the copies are not made or distributed for direct commercial advantage, the ACM copyright notice and the title of the publication and its date appear, and notice is given that copyright is by permission of the Association of Computing Machinery. To copy otherwise, or to republish, requires a fee and/or swcific txxmission. 8 1995 ACM O-89791-737-5

Bytecode-based Java program analysis

Program analysis is the process of collecting control and data-flow information from a program. Current automated program analysis tools employ front-ends that process a program at the source code level. Unfortunately, creating such a conventional front-end is an expensive undertaking – akin to writing the front-end of a compiler. This article presents a new approach to building front-ends for automated program analysis tools. In this approach, a front-end processes a Java program at the object code level.

Student-run usability testing

Usability testing is performed by software development companies to determine whether their software systems are usable. Not only development companies but also end-user companies run usability studies. Given the importance of usability testing in industry, it seems equally important to teach students the basic elements of usability testing. Usability testing can be incorporated into a capstone course. Students can learn about user-centered design and what makes software usable by running usability tests. Usability testing consists of three phases-preparing for the resting, running the actual test, and analyzing test results. Each phase is described in detail in this article, which also contains a description of how usability testing can be incorporated as an assignment in a capstone course or a software engineering sequence.

Authoring a hypertext UNIX help manual

Operating systems require extensive help documentation. The purpose of this research is the development of a hypertext version of man for the UNIX operating system. The conversion of the man pages was facilitated by the use of several programs. This article contains a discussion of automating the conversion of standard text to hypertext.

Responsibility for unreliable software

Unreliable software exposes software developers and distributors to legal risks. Under certain circumstances, the developer and distributor of unreliable software can be sued. To avoid lawsuits, software developers should do the following: determine what the risks are, understand the extent of the risks, and identify ways of avoiding the risks and lessening the consequences of the risks. Liability issues associated with unreliable software are explored in this article.

IGWeL: Interactive and geographical web site locator

This paper contains a description of the Interactive and Geographical Web Site Locator which is a Web search system that takes a map-based approach to representing information. The user picks the category of Web sites to display and the city map on which to display the location of web sites from that category. Java applets and the Hypertext Markup Language were used to develop this application.

Protection of intellectual property on the national information infrastructure

Marybeth Peters, an official in the Copyright Office, is credited with saying “the Internet is the world’s biggest copying machine. ” [11] How can we provide protection of intellectual property rights especially copyright protection in an environment where most functions involve a copy? This question has been addressed by many groups including the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) in the ACM Electronic Publishing Plan [3] and by the Clinton Administration’s Information Infrastructure Task Force (IITF) Working Group on Intellectual Property Rights (Working Group) in their draft report referred to as the Green Paper [6]. The purpose of this article is to examine the issues surrounding protection of intellectual property on the National Information Infrastructure (NII) through the use of copyright laws.