You are here: Home › Workshops › RefTest - Refactoring&Testing Malmö 2012

RefTest Workshop - 21st May, AM.

Refactoring and its testing implications/crossover have emerged over recent years to become important inter-related research topics with high industrial resonance. Many issues and problems still remain unexplored in these two highly-related fields incorporating topics such as the theoretical underpinnings of refactoring, TDD, empirical studies, refactoring of test artefacts, code smell analysis and patterns (both design and micro) to name just a few. Refactoring also has a growing importance in the monitoring of system’s evolution and the propensity of systems to minimise maintenance effort and fault propensity; the over-riding question, still largely unanswered, is whether we can quantify the benefits of refactoring. The purpose and goal of the REFTEST Workshops and project is to bring together industrial practitioners and academics in a setting where current issues in refactoring and test crossover can be presented, relationships with testing discussed, results from current research in refactoring/testing disseminated and future directions distilled.

 

Welcome to the RefTest (Refactoring & Testing) Workshop, 21st May 2012.

Please note that this a Half Day (morning) Workshop

Schedule:

9.15-9.30 Introduction by the program chairs - Steve Counsell and Steve Swift
9.30-10.30 Keynote: Dr Mel O'Cinneide on the topic of refactoring
10.30-11:00 Coffee break
11:00-11.30 Aiko Yamashita on code smells.
11.30-12.15 Steve Counsell on current issues in refactoring/testing
12.15-12.30 Discussion and wrap-up

Keynote Speaker: Mel O'Cinneide, UCD, Dublin

Mel is a lecturer at University College Dublin, his research interests centre around refactoring, and especially the use of search-based software engineering in automated refactoring. Related interests include design patterns, software metrics and code smell detection.

Invited Speaker: Aiko Yamashita, Simula, Norway

Aiko works for Simula and is also working towards a PhD in the area of code smells:

"Most of the work done by software developers is concerned with extending and enhancing existing systems rather than producing new systems, and the lack of maintainability can substantially increase the costs in a project. My work strives to build new approaches to improve software maintainability evaluations by combining static analysis and expert judgement. For the static analysis part, I'm looking into how to use code smells (Fowler, 1999) to evaluate the design and support software evolution.

I am also interested on concept mapping. This is a method that comes from social science research (Trochim, 1989), and I am trying to use it in order to guide the combination and interpretation of code metrics and code smells by expert judgement. The idea is that this method could provide quality evaluations that are tailored to the specific context of a project, therefore more accurate and realistic than generic software quality models.

I am also very enthusiastic on investigating how information is perceived/understood by people, and on studying how the ways on which information is displayed/structured can affect the understanding process. Right now I'm looking into how programmers understand software (source code) and how they search for information when they are performing different programming/maintenance tasks."

Organiser & Additional Speaker: Steve Counsell, Brunel University, UK

Steve Counsell is a Reader at Brunel University and the Principal Investigator of the RefTest Network Project, a three year project to facilitate a meeting of minds between Industry & Academia to investigate areas of interest in Refactoring & Testing.

Please join us for a morning of talks and lively debate on the subjects of Refactoring & Code Smells!

Please visit our project website www.reftest.org for further information on this EPSRC funded project or contact janet.mcfall@brunel.ac.uk for further information.