Towards an Empirical Study Design for Concurrent Software Testing
Silvana Morita Melo, Paulo Sérgio Lopes de Souza, Simone R. S. Souza · 2016
High Performance Computing (HPC) applications consist of concurrent programs with multi-process and/or multithreaded models with varying degree of parallelism. Although these applications are similar to the sequential ones in terms of design patterns, models and principles, they present nondeterministic behavior making the testing activity more complex. Trying to solve this issue a variety of concurrent software testing techniques has been proposed for concurrent programs. However, the problem of the technique selection to a specific context remains. The comparison among techniques to provide an effective selection is difficult because there is not a guideline to build empirical studies and obtain relevant and comparable information in this area. This work proposes a preliminary design for empirical studies based on a literature survey in concurrent software testing context. The purpose is improving the conduction and comparison of empirical studies and, hence, supporting the construction of a body of evidence.