1^st webinar: IESE pilot webinar on statistical testing

Date: 5/3/2008, 14:00-15:00 CET

Presenter: Robert Eschbach (Fraunhofer IESE)

Short summary

Fraunhofer IESE organized a one-hour pilot webinar on "Statistical Testing" in May 2008. Participants came from a range of local software companies (10-500 employees). All-in-all, 6 participants (plus some colleagues watching with a beamer) registered for the webinar.

After the pilot, the participants had the chance to provide some feedback using an online questionnaire (in the ILIAS system). The participants were very satisfied and found that the webinar worked quite well and effective (although for most of them it was their first time that they attended a webinar).

2^nd webinar: Meta-Webinar: Stimulating the acceptance of webinars within the consortium through a meta-webinar

Date: 9/26/2008,14:00-15:00 CET

Presenter: Ludger Thomas (Fraunhofer IESE)

Short summary

To stimulate the provision of webinars both to the consortium and the public audience, Fraunhofer IESE organized a webinar on how to make a webinar (a so called meta-webinar). The meta-webinar covered the following topics:

-          What webinars are

-          How to plan and organize them

-          How to use different tools to deliver effective webinars

How to avoid pitfalls

3^rd Webinar: Introduction into CAMeL-View

Date: 2/27/2009,14:00-15:00 CET

Presenter: Thomas Kosch (iXtronics)

Short summary

CAMeL-View is a computer software tool that facilitates the design, modelling, analysis and synthesis of mechatronic systems from within a unique, easy-to-use, integrated development environment.  Mathematical formulas are derived automatically; in case of multibody systems even based on the minimal representation, allowing for real-time processing in many technical systems. In addition to supporting a variety of analysis techniques known from controlling, CAMeL-View is designed to interface with popular third-party tools. In analysing the systems modelled, engineers will appreciate CAMeL-View's virtual reality support for displaying simulation results.

This webinar gives you a quick overview of the CAMeL-View application. You'll gain significant knowledge on the essential functionality of CAMeL-View and will get an idea of how to work in this development environment. The model used in the webinar is selected from the area of physics and is intentionally simple and easily manageable. By participating the webinar you'll familiarize yourself with a typical implementation of a mechatronic design process.

4^th Webinar: MiLEST and Signal Feature

Date: 4/24/2009,14:00-15:00 CET

Presenter: Justyna Zander (FOKUS)

Short summary
Design decisions that used to be made at the code level are increasingly made at a higher level of abstraction. This shift of focus from implementation to design requires the creation of a consistent, reusable and well-documented specification model. Nowadays, about 40% of embedded system designs are within 20% of functionality expectations. This is partially attributed to the lack of an appropriate approach for functional validation.

To improve hybrid system design, this dissertation presents a test method at the model level. The so-called Model-in-the-Loop for Embedded System Test (MiLEST) approach primarily employs a systematic, structured, repeatable, and abstract test specification and concentrates on automation of the test process.

A signal-feature - oriented paradigm allows an abstract description of a signal and addresses the problems of the missing reference signal flows as well as systematic test data selection. Numerous signal features are identified while predefined test patterns help build the test specification. Testing then starts in the requirements phase and goes down to the test execution level. MiLEST is implemented in MATLAB/Simulink/Stateflow.

Three case studies were presented. They corresponded to component, component-in-the-loop, and integration level tests. Moreover, the quality of the resulting test models and test cases were investigated in depth.

5^th Webinar: Introduction to time partition testing (TPT)

Date: 5/7/2009, 14:00-15:00 CET

Presenter: Stephan Weiss (Piketec)

Short summary 
In recent years the development of automotive embedded devices has changed from an electrical and mechanical engineering discipline to a combination of software and electrical/mechanical engineering. The effects of this change on development processes, methods, and tools as well as on required engineering skills were very significant and are still ongoing today. 
At present there is a new trend in the control industry towards model-based development. Software components are no longer handwritten in C or Assembler code but modeled with MATLAB/Simulink(tm), Statemate, or similar tools. However, quality assurance of model-based developments, especially testing, is still poorly supported. Many development projects require creation of expensive proprietary testing solutions. 
In this web presentation we introduce our test tool "TPT" which masters the complexity of model-based testing in the control domain. To illustrate this statement we present a small automotive example.  
TPT is based on graphical test models that are not only easy to understand but also powerful enough to express very complex, fully automated closed loop tests in real-time. We discuss the reuse of TPT test models in different phases of the development process and demonstrate the use of test parameters to calibrate a system to test.

6^th Webinar: System Modeling for MBT with MATERA

Date: 5/21/2009, 14:00-15:00 CET

Presenter: Fredrik Abbors (Abo Academy)

Short summary
In the webinar we will present a model-based testing process, for online testing, in which we employ a systematic approach for creating UML system models that are used as input for automatic test generation. We show how the requirements are propagated from system specifications (represented as models) to tests, in different steps of the process. In each step, we will describe the methods and tools used and show how requirements evolve. We will also present how requirements can be traced back from failed test cases to the system models. Our approach will be exemplified with excerpts from the NSN telecommunication case study.

For this webinar the Cisco webinar platform was used. A screenshot is shown below.

7^th Webinar: SQS TestWorkFlow

Date: 10/2/2009, 15:00-16:00 CET

Presenter:  Ruben Rodriguez (SQS Spain)

Short summary
SQS TestWORKFLOW is a tool designed to support the entire software validation process, assisting the user in automated testing and the management of requirements, tests and documentation. This tool integrates requirements definition and management, the organisation of the testing process, the automated execution of test programmes, the analysis of results, and the generation of multiple reports. Traceability is provided throughout the process, on account of the recorded relationships between test cases, requirements and executions. SQS TestWORKFLOW's intuitive interface enables every kind of user to understand the process and become familiar with the tool without being an IT specialist, while the systematic methodology which the tool implements accomplishes a good structured test process.

8^th Webinar: Test development as a model-driven engineering process with UTML: Can testers do modeling?

Date: 11/13/2009, 15:00-16:00 CET

Presenter:  Alain-G. Vouffo Feudjio (FhG FOKUS)

Short summary
Whether they are generated automatically from usage models or crafted manually or semi-automatically in what is a highly tedious and error-prone process, test cases are mostly expressed at a low level of abstraction as test scripts. Therefore, there has been a widening gap between high-level system design (UML, SysML...) and lower level test scripting (TTCN-3, JUnit...), which makes the integration of testing activities into the overall software development process more difficult. The UML Testing Profile (UTP) defines a model-driven engineering approach for test development suitable to bridge that gap, by allowing tests to be designed at a higher level of abstraction before being converted into test scripts through model transformations. That approach has been labeled Model-Driven Testing (MDT) or Model-Driven Test case construction.

However, to make modeling more appealing to testers, it has to be tailored to support testing-specific concepts in a natural process instead of workarounds provided with full-blown generic approaches and notations. The UTML notation is an attempt to provide a high-level domain-specific modeling language (DSML) for MDT that takes patterns in black-box test design into account and embodies them in the process. 

This webinar showed two case studies demonstrating how applying MDT combined with test patterns can increase reuse and productivity in test development, while at the same time improving the quality of the resulting test artifacts.