William E. Howden
Professor of Computer Science
Department of Computer Science and Engineering
University of California at San Diego
La Jolla, CA 92093 howden@cse.ucsd.edu
Courses
CSE 111: Object Oriented Design
CSE 211: Software Testing and Analysis
CSE 218: Advanced Testing Methods (Spring 2005: Test Patterns and Frameworks)
Research Summary
Most of my research has been in the area of software testing. I was one of the founders of this research area and was on the committee that organized the first testing research workshop, which eventually became the ISSTA conference. I have worked in most areas of testing research, and I think I was the first person to use some of its now standard terminology, such as "infeasible paths" and "test oracle". In the very early days of testing research we were a small group who all knew each other and it was not difficult to keep track of what was going on.
My first research in testing resulted in a very early symbolic evaluation system (Methodology for the Generation of Program Test Data. IEEE Trans. Computers, 24(5): 554-560, 1975), and my current research is in automated testing. My research in testing has included results in: symbolic evaluation, theory of testing, algebraic testing, statistical testing, weak mutation testing, event sequence analysis, software model checking, comments analysis, program understanding, trustability analysis, functional testing, and empirical studies of effectiveness. I was made a Fellow of the IEEE for my work in functional testing.
Books
Howden,
William E., Functional Program Testing and Analysis. New York:
McGraw-Hill, 1987.
Miller,
Edward and William E. Howden, Software Testing and Validation Techniques,
2nd ed. New York: IEEE Computer Society Press, 1981.
E. F. Miller and W. E. Howden, Software Testing and Validation Techniques, IEEE Computer Society, Long Beach, CA, 1978.
Published
Papers
William E. Howden, Software Test Selection Patterns and Elusive Bugs, Proceedings COMPSAC 2005, IEEE, 2005.
W.E. Howden, R. Kim and P.
Tran, Model-Based Extreme Testing,
ISSRE 2002 (Extended Abstracts), 2002
William E. Howden, Good
Enough versus High Assurance Software Testing and Evaluation Methods. HASE
1998: 1998
W.E. Howden, Proceedings
ISSRE 97, Confidence-Based Reliability And Statistical
Coverage Estimation , Albuquerque,
1997, p. 283
William E. Howden, Systems
testing and statistical test data coverage, COMPSAC 1997: 500-504 1997
William E. Howden, Suehee
Pak: The Derivation of Functional Specifications from Source Code. APSEC 1996:
166- 30
William E. Howden,
Auditing Informal Software Testing and Analysis Processes. APSEC 1996:
332- 29
William E. Howden, G. M.
Shi: Linear and Structural Event Sequence Analysis. ISSTA 1996: 98-106,
1996
William E. Howden, G. M.
Shi: Temporal Event Analysis and Program Understanding. COMPSAC 1995:
4-11 27, 1995
William E. Howden, Yudong
Huang: Software Trustability Analysis. ACM Trans. Softw. Eng. Methodol.
4(1): 36-64 (1995) 1994
William E. Howden, Yudong
Huang: Confidence Oriented Software Dependability Measurement (Abstract). ISSTA
1994: 1994
W.E. Howden, and Cheron
Vail, An informal verification of a critical system, Proceedings
Fifth international Conference on Software Engineering and its Applications,
CIGREF, Toulouse, 1992
William E. Howden, Bruce
Wieand: QDA-A Method for Systematic Informal Program Analysis. IEEE Trans.
Software Eng. 20(6): 445-462 (1994) 1991
William E. Howden, David
Nesbitt, Cheron Vail Bruce Wieand: Verification of complex systems using
incremental operational specifications. Inf. Sci. 57-58: 427-450 (1991)
William E. Howden, Program
Testing versus Proofs of Correctness. Softw. Test., Verif. Reliab. 1(1):
5-15 (1991) 1990
William E. Howden,
Comments Analysis and Programming Errors. IEEE Trans. Software Eng.
16(1): 72-81 (1990) 1989
William E. Howden:,Error-Based Validation Completeness. ICSE 1989: 357
William Howden, A
Comparison of Software and Hardware Testing. IFIP Congress 1989: 344
William E. Howden,
Validating Programs without Specifications. Symposium on Testing, Analysis,
and Verification 1989: 2-9 1986
William E. Howden, A
Functional Approach to Program Testing and Analysis. IEEE Trans. Software Eng.
12(10): 997-1005 (1986)
Shmuel
Rotenstreich, William E. Howden: Two-Dimensional Program Design. IEEE
Trans. Software Eng. 12(3): 377-384 (1986) 1982
William E. Howden,
Validation of Scientific Programs. ACM Comput. Surv. 14(2): 193-227
(1982)
William E. Howden,
Contemporary Software Development Environments. Commun. ACM 25(5):
318-329 (1982)
William E. Howden,
Life-Cycle Software Validation. IEEE Computer 15(2): 71-78 (1982)
William E. Howden, Weak
Mutation Testing and Completeness of Test Sets. IEEE Trans. Software Eng.
8(4): 371-379 (1982) 1981
William E. Howden,
Completeness Criteria for Testing Elementary Program Functions. ICSE 1981:
235-243 1980
William E. Howden, Applicability of Software Validation Techniques to Scientific Programs. ACM Trans. Program. Lang. Syst. 2(3): 307-320 (1980)
William E. Howden,
Functional Program Testing. IEEE Trans. Software Eng. 6(2): 162-169
(1980) 1978
William E. Howden,
Theoretical and Empirical Studies of Program Testing. ICSE 1978: 305-311
William E. Howden,
Algebraic Program Testing. Acta Inf. 10: 53-66 (1978)
William E. Howden,
DISSECT-A Symbolic Evaluation and Program Testing System. IEEE Trans.
Software Eng. 4(1): 70-73 (1978)
William E. Howden,
Theoretical and Empirical Studies of Program Testing. IEEE Trans. Software
Eng. 4(4): 293-298 (1978)
William E. Howden,
Lindenmayer Grammars and Symbolic Testing. Inf. Process. Lett. 7(1):
36-39 (1978)
William
E. Howden, An Evaluation of the Effectiveness of Symbolic Testing. Softw.,
Pract. Exper. 8(4): 381-397 (1978) 1977
William E. Howden,
Symbolic Testing and the DISSECT Symbolic Evaluation System. IEEE Trans.
Software Eng. 3(4): 266-278 (1977) 1976