Review:RTE

<accesscontrol>reviewer,pel</accesscontrol>

Robust Testing Environments (RTE)

Currently much time is spent in setting up system tests, trying to understand exactly what is being tested, understanding errors that occur during tests and verifying the test results. These issues can be especially difficult for distributed enterprise applications made up of a large number of software components that run on a collection of heterogeneous servers or in cloud environments. Load generation for accurate simulation of complex user behaviour is a growing challenge when testing large-scale critical systems. For example, with more and more applications moving to cloud-based infrastructures, typical load generation designed for applications residing on a local area network may be ineffective for robust testing. Research is required to develop new load generation techniques that take into consideration new cloud-based infrastructures where applications may be physically distributed across different infrastructures in different geographical locations and where network bandwidth may be unknown or at different quality levels at various points. This research will develop a set of prototype tools to allow for the more efficient system testing of large enterprise applications.

People involved

• Sandra Theodora Buda - PhD Student, UCD
• Vanessa Ayala - PhD Student, UCD
• Seán Ó Rí­ordáin - PhD Student, TCD
• Thomas Cerqueus - Postdoc researcher, UCD
• Patrick McDonagh - Postdoc researcher, DCU
• Anthony Ventresque - Postdoc researcher, UCD
• Christina Thorpe - Postdoc researcher, UCD
• Philip Perry - Postdoc researcher, UCD
• Simon Wilson - Professor, TCD
• John Murphy - Professor, UCD
• Liam Murphy - Professor, UCD

Collaborations

• IBM Dublin
• Eduardo Cunha de Almeida - Assistant Professor, Federal University of Paraná (Brazil)
• Gerson Sunyé - Associate Professor, University of Nantes (France)
• Yves Le Traon, Professor, University of Luxembourg (Luxembourg)

Statement of work

The following table presents the deliverables for the project.

Quarter	Deliverables	Status
Q2 2012	Survey of data mining algorithms.	Deliv.
201	Survey of anonymization techniques based on k-anonymity for microdata Sep-12 180	Deliv.
201	High-level architecture design of a privacy-preserving data publishing assisting tool Survey of data mining algorithms Mar-13 250	Deliv.
201	Initial algorithm to automatically extract relationships between schemas in the DB Survey of algorithms for database sampling Jan-12 230	Deliv.
201	Design and specification of an algorithm for database sampling (table-level) Oct-12 150	Deliv.
201	Evaluation of scalability and performance of the DB sampling algorithm	Deliv.
201	Evaluation of the DB sampling algorithm on real test case May-13 210	Deliv.
201	Design and specification of an algorithm for database sampling (attribute-level) Survey of algorithms for database extrapolation Dec-13 160	Deliv.
201	Design and specification of an algorithm for database extrapolation Survey of stress testing techniques May-14 150	Deliv.
201	Design of a stress testing methodology for Cloud applications Survey of self-tuning/automatic testing techniques Sep-13 400	Deliv.
201	Design of a self-tuning methodology for Cloud applications Sep-13 400	Deliv.
201	Review and implementation of previous approach An analysis of Firefox bug report data Jan-12 410	Deliv.
201	Survey of the literature on statistical reliability in large scale software systems Mar-13 270	Deliv.
201	Questionnaire: Testing the Cloud Jul-12 90	Deliv.
Q3 2013	Organisation of TTC workshop (ISSTA 2013) Oct-12 300	website