Work Method for Validation and Verification

This working group will contribuate to the development and sharing of the testing technical and know-how of the teams involved. It will study a better integration of different testing techniques. The group's action will be to analyze existing testing technical for each activity in the software development cycle and compare them to the needs and practice of software developers.

In addition, the working group will compare and evaluate the different tools developed by the partners that cover these different activities.

We will be able to share our experiences on the teaching of software testing.

Organization of the group's activities

The group's operation revolves around thematic meetings during which the partners will present their work. These annual meetings, separate from the National GDR Days, bring together on average about forty participants from all over France.

Depending on their location, they can take place over one or two days. During the previous four-year meeting, four meetings were held in Orsay (Nov. 2008), Besançon (June 2009), Grenoble (June 2010) and Rennes (Oct. 2011) PhD students from different groups are also very involved and can make short stays in partner laboratories.

The organization of a thematic school for them is envisaged. Our thematic meetings are open to industrialists and this gives us the opportunity to enhance our work and possibly ensure an industrial transfer of our tools.

These meetings also allow us to facilitate the emergence of projects in response to calls from the NRA.

External relations

Some partners have been part of the Pierre and Marie Curie network on the TAROT test (http://www.int-evry.fr/tarot) even though this network ended in 2008 the summer school on the TAROT test continues to exist beyond the initial support.

Many partners are regularly asked to make presentations at this school. We will be able to take this opportunity to offer tutorials on aspects of the test not covered by the network to the various summer schools organized by this project.

We also wish to invite foreign researchers to our thematic meetings with whom some collaborate. This has been the case in the past: Andreas Podelski (University of Freiburg) and Rob Hierons (University of Brunel) came to present guest presentations at the meetings of Orsay and Besançon.

Internal relations

Our working group deals with validation and verification through testing techniques. Pairing with different techniques should allow us to get closer to the LTP (Languages, Types and Evidence) working group, with which a joint meeting was held in Rennes in 2011. During this new quadrennial it is possible to repeat this experience with groups such as FORWAL (Formalisms and Tools for Verification and Validation) or MFDL (Formal Methods for Software Development) including some partners of MTV2 are also part.