Guest Editorial: A Retrospective of Special Sections on Software Testing and Program Analysis

The papers in this special section focus on software testing and program analysis. Software plays an integral part in our lives today because of its near-ubiquitous influence on our increasingly technological society. Taking appropriate steps to improve software quality is, therefore, of paramount importance. This has fueled the demand for techniques in software testing and program analysis. To meet the demand, there has been a surge in the study and development of techniques such as test case generation, static and dynamic program analysis, and test case prioritization. However, these techniques are still suffering from immaturity and impracticality. Test case generation can hardly be automated; efficiency and state-explosion are still the biggest concerns for most program analysis; and the effectiveness of test case prioritization is still based on small empirical comparisons. Furthermore, the vast majority of empirical studies available on the subject are lab based. Researchers typically evaluate their techniques based on simplified assumptions and selected subject programs that do not necessarily reflect the complexity of large-scale, industrial software. These shortcomings have prevented contemporary software testing and program analysis techniques from yielding truthful benefits to the software in the real world.

Automated summary

The papers in this special section focus on software testing and program analysis, which have become increasingly important due to the ubiquitous influence of software in our lives today. However, current techniques in these areas are still immature and impractical, with challenges such as difficulty in automating test case generation, efficiency and state-explosion issues in program analysis, and limited empirical validation of test case prioritization effectiveness.