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From: marick@m.cs.uiuc.edu
Newsgroups: comp.software-eng
Subject: Re: Orphaned Response
Message-ID: <39400072@m.cs.uiuc.edu>
Date: 26 Feb 90 23:40:00 GMT
References: <39400065@m.cs.uiuc.edu>
Lines: 24
Nf-ID: #R:m.cs.uiuc.edu:39400065:m.cs.uiuc.edu:39400072:000:959
Nf-From: m.cs.uiuc.edu!marick    Feb 26 17:40:00 1990


I asked about symbolic execution.  Somehow, I'd missed an outstanding
paper on it:

W. E. Howden.
An Evaluation of the Effectiveness of Symbolic Testing.
Software - Practice and Experience, vol. 8, no. 4,
pp. 381-398, July-August, 1978.

This is one of several Howden papers where he applies testing
techniques to programs to see how many and which kinds of faults they
detect.** The paper discusses a variety of techniques, not just
symbolic execution.  Must reading for anyone interested in testing.

** Boy, reading that, it looks pretty peculiar.  Can you imagine
someone writing that a JAMA article was noteworthy because it was "one
of several Howden papers in which he applies surgical techniques to
coronary problems to see how many and which kinds of occlusions are
corrected"?  You'd expect that to be a ubiquitous kind of paper,
instead of a prized exception.

Brian Marick
Motorola @ University of Illinois
marick@cs.uiuc.edu, uiucdcs!marick