Testing concurrent java components

ABSTRACT

Testing concurrent software is notoriously difficult due to problems with non-determinism and synchronisation. While tools and techniques for the testing of sequential components are well-understood and widely used, similar tools and techniques for concurrent components are not commonly available. This tutorial will look at the problems associated with testing concurrent components and propose techniques for dealing with these problems. The ConAn (Concurrency Analyser) testing tool supports these techniques for the testing of concurrent Java components and will be discussed and demonstrated in the tutorial. The limitations of the techniques and ConAn, as well as additional V&V tools and techniques to address these limitations will be presented.

REFERENCES

• 1: Long, B., Hoffman, D., and Strooper, P. Tool support for testing concurrent (Java) components. IEEE Trans. Software Engineering, 29, 6 (2003), 555--566.
• 2: Luke Wildman , Brad Long , Paul Strooper, Dealing with Non-Determinism in Testing Concurrent Java Components, Proceedings of the 12th Asia-Pacific Software Engineering Conference (APSEC'05), p.393-400, December 15-17, 2005 [doi>10.1109/APSEC.2005.58]
• 3: Luke Wildman , Brad Long , Paul Strooper, Testing Java Interrupts and Timed Waits, Proceedings of the 11th Asia-Pacific Software Engineering Conference (APSEC'04), p.438-447, November 30-December 03, 2004 [doi>10.1109/APSEC.2004.97]
• 4: Long, B., Strooper, P., and Wildman, L. A method for verifying concurrent Java components based on an analysis of concurrency failures. Concurrency and Computation: Practice and Experience, Wiley, accepted for publication 2006.
• 5: P. Brinch Hansen. Reproducible testing of monitors. Software - Practice and Experience, 8, 1978,721--729.

INDEX TERMS

Primary Classification:
  D. Software
  D.2 SOFTWARE ENGINEERING
      D.2.5 Testing and Debugging

General Terms:
Verification

Keywords:
component, concurrency, testing methodology