The Fourth International Conference on Advances in System Testing and Validation Lifecycle (VALID 2012)

Our research group has participated in the VALID conference. The Fourth International Conference on Advances in System Testing and Validation Lifecycle (VALID 2012) was held in Lisbon (Portugal) from 18th to 23rd of November.

Complex distributed systems with heterogeneous interconnections operating at different speeds and based on various nano- and micro-technologies raise serious problems of testing, diagnosing, and debugging.  Despite current solutions, virtualization and abstraction for large scale systems provide less visibility for vulnerability discovery and resolution, and make testing tedious, sometimes unsuccessful, if not properly thought from the design phase.

The conference on advances in system testing and validation considers the concepts, methodologies, and solutions dealing with designing robust and available systems. Its target covers aspects related to debugging and defects, vulnerability discovery, diagnosis, and testing.

The conference VALID 2012 continues a series of events focusing on designing robust components and systems with testability for variant features of behavior and interconnection. The conference provided a forum where researchers presented recent research results and new research problems and directions related to them.

The conference was held inside the SoftNet 2012 which includes several conferences: ICSEA 2012, ICSNC 2012, SIMUL 2012, CENTRIC 2012 and VALID 2012.

We are members of the VALID 2012 Technical Program Committee and we have participated in the conference presenting the following paper:

• Variability Management in Testing Architectures for Embedded Control Systems, Goiuria Sagardui, Leire Etxeberria and Joseba A. Agirre

This paper describes a simulation environment for embedded software based on model based testing and variability management and using Simulink as simulation tool. In recent years, embedded systems have substantially increased their presence both in industry and in our everyday lives. Hence, more and more effort is being dedicated to the development of such systems. Since embedded systems involve computation that is subject to physical constraints, the development and validation of software for such systems becomes a challenge. Moreover, the validation of the embedded system within the environment increases the complexity and cost of testing. Testing by simulation of the system and its environment is one of the most promising approaches to reduce testing costs.

via Flickr by hamaikaeraikuntza

As embedded software usually runs under different configurations, it is costly to test the software under real conditions; in our paper we propose variability management of configurations to help to automate the simulation environment. This way, validation is simplified and intensive testing can be performed.

Next year SoftNet 2013 conferences will be celebrated in Venice (Italy).