VERDICTS : Visual Exploratory Requirements Discovery and Injection for Comprehension and Testing of Software

We introduce a methodology and research tools for visual exploratory software analysis. VERDICTS combines exploratory testing, tracing, visualization, dynamic discovery and injection of requirements speci cations into a live quick-feedback cycle, without recompilation or restart of the system under test. This supports discovery and veri cation of software dynamic behavior, software comprehension, testing, and locating the defect origin. At its core, VERDICTS allows dynamic evolution and testing of hypotheses about requirements and behavior, by using contracts as automated component veri ers. We introduce Semantic Mutation Testing as an approach to evaluate concordance of automated veri ers and the functional speci cations they represent with respect to existing implementation. Mutation testing has promise, but also has many known issues. In our tests, both black-box and white-box variants of our Semantic Mutation Testing approach performed better than traditional mutation testing as a measure of quality of automated veri ers. VERDICTS: Visual Exploratory Requirements Discovery and Injection for Comprehension and Testing of Software By “e k Kanat Bolazar B.S. Middle East Technical University, 1990 M.S. Syracuse University, 1993