CSC 509 Assignment 5:
Read Two Recent Papers, Discuss Them in Class,
and Answer Some Questions about Them

• Reading completed by 2pm Monday 19 May
• Answer to the questions posted on the 509 PolyLearn Wiki by 11:59pm Monday 19 May

Assignment Reading

Do a first and a light second pass read of the following papers and be prepared to participate in a class discussion during lecture time on Monday 19 May:

• "Software Testing with an Operational Profile: OP Definition", Carol Smidts, et al., February 2014, ACM Computing Surveys

• "A Survey of Combinatorial Testing", Changhai Nie, Hareton Leung, January 2011, ACM Computing Surveys

These two papers represent a two areas of software testing that are important to be aware of. Both papers have been published relatively recently.

Before, during, or after our Monday class discussion, post your answers to the questions below to the Assignment 4 Section of the 509 PolyLearn wiki. Please post these comments per the instructions on the wiki no later than 11:59pm Monday 19 May.

Here are the two questions to answer for this assignment. They are precisely the same questions as for Assignment 4. Here for Assignment 5 there are two papers to be red, so you need to answer both questions for each paper, for a total of four answers.

Your answers need not be more than a paragraph or two per question, but you should do some earnest thinking about them. Your answers can be longer if you like.

Question 1: In reading the paper, what if anything have you learned that may be valuable for the kinds software you may develop in the future, either for your remaining classes at Poly or in other future places of employment or further graduate study?

Question 2: In reading the paper, what if anything have you learned that may be valuable for the specific project you're working on for 509 this quarter?

You'll note of course that both questions have an "if anything" clause, which means that your answer could be "I haven't learning anything". If this is your answer, you can't just leave it at that, however. You must say at least a few sentences about why you haven't learned anything.

You'll also note that everyone can see everyone else's answers. So if you feel the urge, you can "cheat" by waiting until you see someone else's answer(s) that you like and copy those. That of course misses the point about the assignment, which is for you to read the paper and reflect on what you got out of it.

As noted above, please post your answers to the PolyLearn wiki by 11:59PM Monday 19 May.