37474982
A Study on a Path-based Strategy for Selecting Black-box Generated Test Cases
Various black-box methods for the generation of test cases have been proposed in the literature. Many of these methods, including the category-partition method and the classification-tree method, follow the approach of partition testing, in which the input domain is partitioned into subdomains according to important aspects of the specification, and test cases are then derived from the subdomains. Though comprehensive in terms of these important aspects, execution of all the test cases so generated may not be feasible under the constraint of tight testing resources. In such circumstances, there is a need to select a smaller subset of test cases from the original test suite for execution. In this paper, we propose the use of white-box information to guide the selection of test cases from the original test suite generated by a black-box testing method. Furthermore, we have developed some techniques and algorithms to facilitate the implementation of our approach, and demonstrated its viability and benefits by means of a case study.
17708725
An extended fault class hierarchy for specification-based testing
Kuhn, followed by Tsuchiya and Kikuno, have developed a hierarchy of relationships among several common types of faults (such as variable and expression faults) for specification-based testing by studying the corresponding fault detection conditions. Their analytical results can help explain the relative effectiveness of various fault-based testing techniques previously proposed in the literature. This article extends and complements their studies by analyzing the relationships between variable and literal faults, and among literal, operator, term, and expression faults. Our analysis is more comprehensive and produces a richer set of findings that interpret previous empirical results, can be applied to the design and evaluation of test methods, and inform the way that test cases should be prioritized for earlier detection of faults. Although this work originated from the detection of faults related to specifications, our results are equally applicable to program-based predicate testing that involves logic expressions.
26872843
Promoting the use of information technology in education via lightweight authoring tools
The potential benefits of using information technology in classrooms for enhancing students' learning have been well known, but the realisation of these benefits is often hindered by a number of factors, notably the lack of knowledge/skills of teachers, the lack of appropriate software, insufficient teacher time, and the limitation of hardware and network infrastructure. In this paper, we introduce the approach of using lightweight authoring tools to address the difficulties faced by teachers. This approach has been adopted on many occasions for the continuing development of primary school teachers in Hong Kong, including many workshops and a formal in-service teacher education course. This paper describes how the approach works, and reports our experiences and the very encouraging feedback we received with the use of lightweight authoring tools.
15449420
Procurement of enterprise resource planning systems: experiences with some Hong Kong companies
Many cases of adoption of Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) systems have been reported in the literature. Some of the adopted ERP systems fail to satisfy the customer's requirements, despite the high spending and substantial efforts that have been put into the adoption exercise. This is undoubtedly unsatisfactory. A way to avoid this problem is to adopt a well planned, managed, and controlled ERP procurement process. This paper describes our studies of three Chinese companies in Hong Kong which have adopted ERP systems. We report the experience of these companies, and discuss how the Chinese culture might have shaped the procurement practices in their ERP adoption exercises.
45848865
Optimal improvement of the lower bound performance of partition testing strategies
Although partition testing strategies are intuitively more appealing than random testing, previous empirical and analytical studies show that under unfavourable circumstances partition testing can be very ineffective. The problem of maximally improving the lower bound performance of partition testing by the choice of appropriate test distributions is investigated. An algorithm that generates optimal test distributions for this purpose is proposed and analysed. Moreover, the algorithm can also serve to systematically approximate the proportional sampling strategy, which has previously been proved to be at least as good as random testing.
15986119
Designing activities for learning software quality practices
This paper presents our design of the learning activities in a course on software quality practices. We describe how we strive to provide opportunities for students to gain hands-on experience on exemplar software quality practices in spite of various constraints.
17008107
A Rendering Equation for Specular Transfers and Its Integration into Global Illumination
In this paper, we present a rigorous theoretical formulation of the fundamental problem—indirect illumination from area sources via curved ideal specular surfaces. Intensity and area factors are introduced to clarify this problem and to rectify the radiance from these specular surfaces. They take surface geometry, such as Gaussian curvature, into account. Based on this formulation, an algorithm for integrating ideal specular transfers into global illumination is also presented. This algorithm can deal with curved specular reflectors and transmitters. An implementation is described based on wavefront tracing and progressive radiosity. Sample images generated by this method are presented.
44493552
Adaptation of the temporal receptive fields of macaque V1 neurons
Abstract Traditional view of macaque V1 neurons is that they are static spatiotemporal filters. This study shows that V1 neurons’ temporal receptive fields (kernels) are dynamic and adaptive. In order to study the adaptation of the kernels to a variety of stimuli, we developed a regression approach to recover kernels using naturalistic stimuli. Using this technique, we studied how the kernels of the V1 neurons in macaque monkeys adapt to the frequency bandwidth of naturalistic signals. We found that the temporal frequency tunings and the gains of the receptive fields of the neurons change according to the statistical context of the stimulus environment.
4001661
Configuring common personal software: a requirements-driven approach
We investigate the personalization capabilities of common personal software systems. We use a typical e-mail client as an example of such a system, and examine the configuration screens it offers to its users. We discover that each configuration value reflects each of the ways with which the user goals can be satisfied. Thus, we construct a goal model in which alternative ways for satisfying high level goals are matched with alternative system configurations. This way, automatic configuration of the system by reasoning about the overlaying goal model can be achieved. We find that the vast majority of the configuration options that refer to system functionality can be configured using this method, facilitating thereby the personalization tasks for users with no technical background, and ensuring, at the same time, consistency and meaningfulness in the configuration result.
2854649
Frequency-response-masking technique incorporating extrapolated impulse response band-edge shaping filter
Techniques based on the frequency-response masking (FRM) approach are known to be highly efficient for achieving drastic reduction of the number of multipliers and adders in narrow transition band linear-phase finite-impulse response (FIR) filters. Basic FRM structure comprises a band-edge shaping filter and two masking filters. It is observed that the impulse response of the band-edge shaping filter of FRM shows quasi-periodic property. Previous study demonstrated that the quasi-periodic property of the impulse responses of lowpass or highpass digital FIR filters can be exploited to reduce the complexity of the filter by using extrapolated impulse response technique. Extrapolating the idea, the band-edge shaping filter in FRM may be designed by the extrapolated impulse response technique. In this paper, an FRM technique incorporating extrapolated impulse response band-edge shaping filter is introduced. An iterative optimization procedure is proposed to design the FRM subfilters. An example taken from the literature is used to illustrate that the number of multipliers produced by our technique is less than 80 percent of earlier results.
15539720
Extrapolated impulse response filter and its application in the synthesis of digital filters using the frequency-response masking technique
Techniques based on the frequency-response masking (FRM) approach are known to be highly effective for reducing the number of multipliers and adders in linear-phase finite-impulse response (FIR) filters. The basic FRM structure comprises a band-edge shaping filter and two masking filters. It is observed that the impulse response of the band-edge shaping filter of an FRM structure exhibits a quasi-periodic property. Previous study showed that lowpass or highpass digital FIR filters, whose impulse responses are quasi-periodic, can be synthesized using extrapolated impulse response technique, which leads to structure with much reduced arithmetic complexity. In this paper, an implementation of the extrapolated impulse response filter is presented. An FRM technique incorporating extrapolated impulse response band-edge shaping filter is introduced. An iterative optimization procedure is proposed to design the FRM sub-filters. It is demonstrated using an example taken from the literature that our new technique produces a saving of over 20% in the number of multipliers used. r 2004 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.