The 8th International Workshop on Testing Extra-Functional Properties and Quality Characteristics of Software Systems

SCOPE

The rapid development towards increased integration of software with the social and physical world that we see today means that quality aspects such as performance, safety, security, and robustness become more important in an increasing number of the systems and devices, which we use and depend on. In this context, the success of a software product may not only depend on the logical correctness of its functions, but also on the system quality characteristics. Such system characteristics, which are referred to and captured as Extra-Functional Properties (EFPs) or Non-Functional Properties, are particularly important in resource constrained systems such as in the domains of real-time embedded and cyber-physical systems. Therefore, such systems need to be tested with a special attention to the EFPs. Testing EFPs is challenging and often requires different approaches compared to testing normal functionality. ITEQS provides a focused forum with the goal of bringing together researchers and practitioners to share ideas, identify challenges, propose solutions and techniques, and in general expand the state of the art in testing EFPs and quality characteristics of software systems and services. The workshop endorses contributions in a wide range of topics related to testing of EFPs in the form of full papers and short yet solid work-in-progress/position papers.

Note: The workshop does not accept papers that focus purely on functional testing!

Check out the Call for papers for the list of topics and more details.

Contact

• iteqs2024[at]easychair.org

Mehrdad Saadatmand, RISE Research Institutes of Sweden, Sweden (mehrdad.saadatmand[at]ri.se)

Eduard Enoiu, Mälardalen University, Sweden (eduard.paul.enoiu[at]mdh.se)

Dragos Truscan, Åbo Akademi University, Finland (dragos.truscan[at]abo.fi)

Accepted Papers

	Title
	A Survey on the Verification and Validation of Artificial Pancreas Software Systems ITEQS Bara' Nazzal, Manar Alalfi, James Cordy
	Automated SQA Framework with Predictive Machine Learning in Airfield Software ITEQS Ridwan Hossain, Akramul Azim, Linda Cato, Bruce Wilkins
	ConDU: Method for On-the-fly Detection of Non-deadlock Concurrency Errors in UAV Software ITEQS Jinseok Park, Changhui Bae, Seongjin Lee
	Early Detection with Explainability of Network Attacks Using Deep Learning ITEQS Tanwir Ahmad, Dragos Truscan
	Java Lock Contention Anti-Patterns and Their Associated Recommendations ITEQS Aritra Ahmed, Ramiro Liscano, Akramul Azim, Yee-Kang Chang, Vijay Sundaresan
	Testing cyber-physical systems with explicit output coverage ITEQS Jarkko Peltomäki, Jesper Winsten, Maxime Methais, Ivan Porres

Call for Papers

8th International Workshop on Testing Extra-Functional Properties and Quality Characteristics of Software Systems (ITEQS) Co-located with the 17th IEEE International Conference on Software Testing, Verification and Validation (ICST 2024)

Scope: The rapid development towards increased integration of software with the social and physical world that we see today means that quality aspects such as performance, safety, security, and robustness become more important in an increasing number of the systems and devices, which we use and depend on. In this context, the success of a software product may not only depend on the logical correctness of its functions, but also on the system quality characteristics. Such system characteristics, which are referred to and captured as Extra-Functional Properties (EFPs) or Non-Functional Properties, are particularly important in resource constrained systems such as in the domains of real-time embedded and cyber-physical systems. Therefore, such systems need to be tested with a special attention to the EFPs. Testing EFPs is challenging and often requires different approaches compared to testing normal functionality. ITEQS provides a focused forum with the goal of bringing together researchers and practitioners to share ideas, identify challenges, propose solutions and techniques, and in general expand the state of the art in testing EFPs and quality characteristics of software systems and services. The workshop endorses contributions in a wide range of topics related to testing of EFPs in the form of full papers and short yet solid work-in-progress/position papers.

Note: The workshop does not accept papers that focus purely on functional testing!

TOPICS

Topics of interest include, but are not limited to the following:

• Model-based testing of EFPs; e.g., choice of modeling languages to capture EFPs and their role on testability, model-based test case generation, etc.
• Performance, Robustness, and Security Testing
• Validation and Verification of AI-based systems wrt to properties such as robustness, reliability, safety
• Mutation-based testing for EFPs; e.g., application of mutation techniques for testing of EFPs particularly introduction of EFP-specific mutation operators
• Testing quality in software product lines and variant-intensive system
• Testing quality characteristics of distributed, mobile, and cloud applications
• Search-based testing techniques for EFPs
• Testability, observability, controllability and the role of the platform; e.g., how the choice of operating system can impact testability of EFPs, for instance, a real-time operating system, introducing testability mechanisms into a platform, designing - middlewares for testing of EFPs
• Empirical studies and experience reports; e.g., on the importance of testing EFPs, evaluation of testing methods, case-study and reports on project failures due to EFPs, comparison of methods and techniques
• Quality assurance, standards, and their impact on testing EFPs
• Requirements and testing EFPs; e.g., identification and generation of test oracles for EFPs from requirements, requirements for testability, traceability
• Coverage criteria in testing EFPs
• Processes and their role in testing EFPs; e.g., agile and TDD
• Fault localization for EFPs and debugging
• Formal methods, model-checking, and reasoning about EFPs
• Parallelism, Concurrency, and Testing of multicore applications
• Testing real-time, embedded, and cyber-physical systems, and their challenges
• Static analysis for evaluation of EFPs;
• Continuous Integration and Continuous Deployment (CI/CD) in relation to EFP testing
• Quantum computing implications for EFP testing;
• Testing for fairness, transparency, and bias in AI/ML systems

SUBMISSION GUIDELINES

Paper formats:

• 1) full papers: 6-10 pages
• 2) solid work-in-progress and position papers: 4 pages

in IEEE double column format. Submission site: https://easychair.org/conferences/?conf=iteqs2024 Accepted papers will be published in IEEE Digital Library.

Contact: iteqs2024[at]easychair.org

The Challenges of Integrating Static Analysis and Dynamic Security Testing in the Context of Increasing Regulation

Abstract: The rapid growth of digital products and technologies has led to increased regulation in the European Union. This, coupled with a shortage of skilled workers, has created a demand for easy-to-use, cost-effective turnkey security testing solutions that produce reliable results. However, applying static analysis or dynamic security testing individually presents challenges, especially in regulated markets. Combining these two approaches to achieve the desired properties is not a straightforward task. In this presentation, we will discuss the solutions and open challenges in the vulnerability lifecycle, and share results from two projects, IntelliSecTest and the EU project DOSS.

Speaker: Martin A. Schneider

Bio: Martin Schneider is head of the Research Group Testing at Fraunhofer FOKUS‘ business unit Quality Engineering in Berlin, Germany. With a strong background in security testing, he is doing research to advance the foundations of security testing and its applications. His current research topics include combining different securiy testing techniques, applications for the Internet-of-Things, as well as evaluating the robustness of machine learning.

• 2023 - Dublin, Ireland
• 2022 - Virtual
• 2021 - Virtual
• 2020 - Porto, Portugal
• 2019 - Xi’an, China
• 2018 - Västerås - Sweden
• 2017 - Tokyo - Japan