Authors:
Bruno Lima
and
João Pascoal Faria
Affiliation:
Faculty of Engineering, University of Porto and INESC TEC, Portugal
Keyword(s):
Software Testing, Distributed Systems, Heterogeneous Systems, Systems of Systems, State of the Practice.
Related
Ontology
Subjects/Areas/Topics:
Distributed and Mobile Software Systems
;
Distributed Architectures
;
Software Engineering
;
Software Engineering Methods and Techniques
;
Software Testing and Maintenance
Abstract:
In a growing number of domains, such as health-care and transportation, several independent systems, forming
a heterogeneous and distributed system of systems, are involved in the provisioning of end-to-end services to
users. Testing such systems, running over interconnected mobile and cloud-based platforms, is particularly
important and challenging, with little support being provided by current tools. In order to assess the current
state of the practice regarding the testing of distributed and heterogeneous systems (DHS) and identify opportunities
and priorities for research and innovation initiatives, we conducted an exploratory survey that was
responded by 147 software testing professionals that attended industry-oriented software testing conferences,
and present the main results in this paper. The survey allowed us to assess the relevance of DHS in software
testing practice, the most important features to be tested in DHS, the current status of test automation and tool
sourcing f
or testing DHS, and the most desired features in test automation solutions for DHS. We expect that
the results presented in the paper are of interest to researchers, tool vendors and service providers in this field.
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