UT Dallas CS and IEEE Reliability Society Organize IEEE Software Testing Contest

Software plays an integral part in our everyday lives because of its near omnipresent influence on our increasingly technological society. Therefore, taking appropriate steps to apply software testing techniques is of utmost importance. To promote advanced software testing theory, techniques, and tools, the IEEE Reliability Society Dallas Chapter, UT Dallas Computer Science Department, along with other industry sponsors hosted an IEEE Software Testing Contest on January 27, 2018. The event was organized by UT Dallas CS Professors, Dr. Eric Wong, the Editor-in-Chief of IEEE Transactions on Reliability (TRel or TR) and the Founding Director of the UT Dallas Advanced Research Center for Software Testing and Quality Assurance, and Dr. Jey Veerasamy, Director of the Center for Computer Science Education & Outreach (CCSEO).  Drs. Wong and Veerasamy were assisted by Dr. Wong’s PhD students and CCSEO student workers.

The event brought in approximately 180 attendees ranging from high school and college students to industry professionals. The all-day contest was split into two parts. The first part was a 2-hour tutorial where attendees learned how to correctly configure their laptops for the competition and learned how to use JUnit and the Mooctest.net online testing platform. The contestants were split into three rooms. Room one was for college students, room two for high school students, and room three for those whose laptops were not properly configured for the contest, which included both high school and college students. The second part of the contest, which took place from 1:00 to 4:30 pm, required contestants to design test cases with specific input values based on the given source code and specifications to test two Java programs. The quality of test cases was measured by the code coverage and mutation score achieved.

Dr. Jey Veerasamy remarked on the success of the event and introducing students to the world of software testing saying, “This software testing contest is truly one of a kind! Most computer science students tend to look down upon testing and often do not realize the complexity behind the effective and near-comprehensive testing mechanisms. I believe this contest opened the eyes of many students. We hope to do host this contest every year and introduce the real-world testing needs to students!”

Below is the list of winners for both the College/Professional and High School Levels. Every contestant received a certificate from the contest.

College and Professional Level

High School Level

At the international level, Dr. Wong organized the 1st IEEE International Software Testing Contest at the 17th IEEE International Conference on Software Quality, Reliability, and Security (QRS 2017) in Prague, Czech Republic last July. The second IEEE International Software Testing Contest will be held at QRS 2018 in Lisbon, Portugal on July 17, 2018. Dr. Wong is the Steering Committee Chair of the QRS Conference, which combined the IEEE International Conference on Software Security and Reliability (SERE) and the IEEE International Conference on Quality Software (QSIC) in 2015. The conference is sponsored by the IEEE Reliability Society with Q representing unity to familiarize themselves with areas critical to the software industry as practitioners bring their needs to the table.

ABOUT THE UT DALLAS COMPUTER SCIENCE DEPARTMENT

The UT Dallas Computer Science program is one of the largest Computer Science departments in the United States with over 2,400 bachelor’s-degree students, more than 1,000 master’s students, 150 Ph.D. students,  53 tenure-track faculty members and 38 full-time senior lecturers, as of Fall 2017. With The University of Texas at Dallas’ unique history of starting as a graduate institution first, the CS Department is built on a legacy of valuing innovative research and providing advanced training for software engineers and computer scientists.