This issue has three interesting papers about test design. The first paper in this issue, Automated functional testing of online search services, by Zhou, Zhang, Hagenbuchner, Tse, Kuo, and Chen, tests search engines. A major problem that is addressed is the "oracle function," which for these applications means how can we know whether the search results are "correct?" (Recommended by Byoungju Choi.) The second, Automated verification and testing of user-interactive undo features in database applications, by Ngo and Tan, addresses the problem of testing the ability for users to undo operations. A correspondence between program statements that raise erroneous effects and program statements that can undo those effects is reported, and is used to develop a verification technique. (Recommended by Shaoying Liu.) The third, Testing aspect-oriented programs with finite state machines, by Xu, El-Ariss, Xu, and Wang, reports that aspect-oriented programs have new kinds of faults, which they call aspect faults. This observation is used to develop a test strategy to detect these kinds of faults. (Recommended by Sudipto Ghosh.)
The journal held its third editorial board meeting at the fifth International Conference on Software Testing, Verification, and Reliability (ICST) in Montreal. It was a good meeting with our publishing editor from Wiley and about a dozen members of the board. This meeting is important to resolve issues, discuss strategic directions for the journal, and to plan for future directions.
Our most important decision was to institute two yearly awards for the journal. The first will be a best paper of the year award. Accepted papers will be nominated by the Reviewing Editor who handles the paper, then the winner will be chosen from among the nominees by a vote of members of the editorial board. The second will be the paper with the highest 5-year impact. We will make a short list based on the number of references, then a discussion and vote from a subset of the editorial board. We expect to announce the first winners early in the next year.
Jeff Offutt
offutt@gmu.edu
26 April 2012