Communications of the ACM
Faster and More Efficient Software For the Air Force
"Our techniques will help to improve the quality of software in the military to help ensure that . . . systems behave properly in the field," says University of Nebraska-Lincoln Assistant Professor Myra Cohen.
Credit: University of Nebraska, Lincoln
The U.S. Air Force should have more confidence in its software as a result of a new research project at the University of Nebraska in Lincoln. Led by Myra Cohen, the Nebraska team has conducted research on finding faults earlier and more often in large and complex families of software systems. Such systems tend to have interacting features that may lead to faults.
The team has developed an algorithm and open source tool that generates tests 300 times faster and reduces the software testing time. The techniques improve the efficiency of the software testing process by reusing test results from different systems that have similar features. Few algorithms are capable of handling dependencies between features. "Either they run slowly or they select very large test schedules, which means that testing takes too long," Cohen says.
"In the long term, we expect that as software product lines are used to produce large numbers of systems, and as they mature over time, we will be able to deploy new systems faster and with less likelihood of failure," Cohen says.
From Wright-Patterson Air Force Base
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