Program Testing and Analysis

Quick Facts

Content

This course introduces the principles and practice of testing and analyzing large software systems. The course provides an overview of program analysis and covers two topics in more detail: Test generation, i.e., techniques for automatically creating inputs to execute a program, and dynamic analysis, i.e., techniques for reasoning about the runtime behavior of a program. In addition to weekly lectures, students will deepen their understanding through a practical course project (implement a program analysis based on an existing framework) and acquire research skills by writing a term paper. Besides academic achievements, the course will help students to improve their programming skills by learning about common sources of mistakes and about techniques to find them.

Schedule

This is a preliminary schedule that may change.

Additional topics (relevant only for term papers):

• Differential testing:
  
  • Daniel et al.
  • CSmith
  • Substitutability

• Performance profiling:
  • Mytkowicz et al.
  • Empirical complexity
  • Memory bloat

• Path profiling
  • Ball-Larus
  • Whole program
  • HOLMES

Questions, quizzes, and additional information

We are using Piazza for class discussion, in-class quizzes, and for sharing additional material. The system is highly catered to getting you help fast and efficiently from classmates and instructors. Rather than emailing questions to the teaching staff, please post your questions on Piazza.

Find our class page at: https://piazza.com/tu-darmstadt.de/fall2015/20000933iv/home

Term Paper and Project Report

For writing term papers and project reports, please use this LaTeX template.

Grading

Grading will be based on the course project, the term paper, and the final exam (33% each). To pass the course, students have to pass all three parts. We also provide a non-mandatory mid-term "exam", which allows students to obtain extra credits that can improve the overall grade by up to 10%.