Thesis (M.S.)--Oregon State University, 2001. / Typescript (photocopy). Includes bibliographical references (leaves 64-67). Also available on the World Wide Web.

Thesis (Ph.D.)--University of Texas at Dallas, 2008. / Includes vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 138-145)

Thesis (Ph. D.)--West Virginia University, 2009. / Title from document title page. Document formatted into pages; contains xi, 124 p. : ill. (some col.). Includes abstract. Includes bibliographical references (p. 118-124).

Researchers/engineers in the field of software testing have valued coverage as a testing metric for decades now. There have been various empirical results that have shown that as coverage increases the ability of the test program to detect a fault also increases. As a result numerous coverage techniques have been introduced. Which coverage criteria co-relates better with fault detection? Which coverage criteria on the other hand have lower correlation with fault detection? In other words, does it make more sense to achieve a higher percentage of c1 kind of coverage over a higher percentage of c2 coverage to gain good fault detection rate. Do the popular block and branch coverage perform better or does path coverage outperform them? Answering these questions will help future engineers/researchers in generating more efficient test suites and in gaining a better metric of measurement. This also helps in test suite minimization. This thesis studies the relationship between coverage and mutant kill-rates over large, randomly generated test suites for statement, branch, predicate, and path coverage of two realistic programs to answer the above open questions. The experiments both confirm conventional wisdom about these coverage criteria and contains a few surprises. / Graduation date: 2013

Software systems will eventually contribute to their own maintenance using implementations of self-awareness. Understanding how to specify, model, and implement software with a sense of self is a daunting problem. This research draws inspiration from the automatic functioning of a gimbal---a self-righting mechanical device that supports an object and maintains the orientation of this object with respect to gravity independently of its immediate operating environment. A software gimbal exhibits a self-righting feature that provisions software with two auxiliary mechanisms: a historical mechanism and a reflective mechanism. The historical mechanism consists of behavior classifiers trained on statistical models of data that are collected from executions of the program that exhibit known behaviors of the program. The reflective mechanism uses the historical mechanism to assess an ongoing or selected execution. This dissertation presents techniques for the identification and modeling of program execution features as statistical models. It further demonstrates how statistical machine-learning techniques can be used to manipulate these models and to construct behavior classifiers that can automatically detect and label known program behaviors and detect new unknown behaviors. The thesis is that statistical summaries of data collected from a software program's executions can model and predict external behaviors of the program. This dissertation presents three control-flow features and one value-flow feature of program executions that can be modeled as stochastic processes exhibiting the Markov property. A technique for building automated behavior classifiers from these models is detailed. Empirical studies demonstrating the efficacy of this approach are presented. The use of these techniques in example software engineering applications in the categories of software testing and failure detection are described.

Thesis (M.S.)--University of Texas at El Paso, 2008. / Title from title screen. Vita. CD-ROM. Includes bibliographical references. Also available online.

Thesis (M.S. in computer science)--Washington State University, August 2006. / Includes bibliographical references (p. 111-115).

M. Tech. Business Information Systems / Information Technology projects can fail for any number of reasons and in some cases can result in considerable financial losses for the organisations that undertake them. One pattern of failure that has been observed but seldom studied is the IT project that seems to take on a life of its own, continuing to absorb valuable resources without reaching its objective. The research study investigated the different challenges and failures of IT projects and looked at the root causes of these failures and how to overcome them. This research study was informed by the use of a case study of Liberty Life, one of the largest financial service providers in South Africa. The primary research question that informs this research study is: How mature is the organisation in implementing Information Technology projects.

Companies have invested large amounts of money on information systems development. Unfortunately, not all information systems developments are successful. Software project failure is frequent and lamentable. Surveys and statistical analysis results underscore the severity and scope of software project failure. Limited research relates software structure to information systems failures. Systematic study of failure provides insights into the causes of IS failure. More importantly, it contributes to better monitoring and control of projects and enhancing the likelihood of the success of management information systems. The underlining theories and literature that contribute to the construction of theoretical framework come from general systems theory, complexity theory, and failure studies. One hundred COBOL programs from a single company are used in the analysis. The program log clearly documents the date, time, and the reasons for changes to the programs. In this study the relationships among the variables of business requirements change, software complexity, program size and the error rate in each phase of software development life cycle are tested. Interpretations of the hypotheses testing are provided as well. The data shows that analysis error and design error occur more often than programming error. Measurement criteria need to be developed at each stage of the software development cycle, especially in the early stage. The quality and reliability of software can be improved continuously. The findings from this study suggest that it is imperative to develop an adaptive system that can cope with the changes to the business environment. Further, management needs to focus on processes that improve the quality of the system design stage.

Consumers demand new and innovative personal computing devices every 2 years when their cellular phone service contracts are renewed. Yet, a 2 year development cycle for the concurrent development of both hardware and software is nearly impossible. As more components and features are added to the devices, maintaining this 2 year cycle with current tools will become commensurately harder. This dissertation delves into the feasibility of simplifying the development of such systems by employing heterogeneous systems on a chip in conjunction with a retargetable compiler such as the hybrid computer retargetable compiler (Hy-C). An example of a simple architecture description of sufficient detail for use with a retargetable compiler like Hy-C is provided. As a software engineer with 30 years of experience, I have witnessed numerous system failures. A plethora of software development paradigms and tools have been employed to prevent software errors, but none have been completely successful. Much discussion centers on software development in the military contracting market, as that is my background. The dissertation reviews those tools, as well as some existing retargetable compilers, in an attempt to determine how those errors occurred and how a system like Hy-C could assist in reducing future software errors. In the end, the potential for a simple retargetable solution like Hy-C is shown to be very simple, yet powerful enough to provide a very capable product in a very fast-growing market.