Course syllabus

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TDA567 / DIT083 Testing, debugging and verification (7.5 hp)

The course is offered by the department of Computer Science and Engineering.

Teachers

Lecturers

Teaching Assistants

Guest Lecture

There will be one guest lecture given by John Hughes, professor at Chalmers, founder and CEO of Quviq AB. John is a world expert in property-based testing and one of the developers of QuickCheck, a tool for testing Haskell programs automatically. 

Course purpose

The course is about how to convince oneself that a program unit really does what it should. There are different methods for verifying programs that will be covered in this course:

  • testing (which has the purpose of finding errors in a program in a systematic way)
  • debugging (which has the purpose to systematically trace and eliminate an error)
  • proving or formal verification (reasoning about the program in order to guarantee correctness).

Verifying a program only makes sense if we can precisely specify what the program is supposed to do. Many specifications are written in natural language which might lead to imprecision and misunderstandings. In the course you will learn how to use precise methods for specifying functional requirements. Such precise specifications will then be our basis for the verification of programs. 

Course design

The course will have two lectures per week (Monday and Thursday), one lab session (Monday) and one exercise session (Thursday). Lab sessions will focus on the hand-in assignments: this is where you can get help with upcoming hand-ins, as well get clarification about feedback.  Exercise sessions will be closely linked to the lectures of the week. Here, students may solve given problems, discuss solutions and interact with teachers in a more informal manner. The first part of the exercise session is dedicated to students solving problems themselves or in small groups, with the later half dedicated to discussion of (possibly alternative) solutions.

Students are strongly advised to attend all teacher-led sessions to get as much as possible out of the course. 

Read more on the respective pages:

Lectures

Exercise Sessions

Hand-in Assignments

Schedule

See Time Edit.

Course format

Due to the COVID-19 pandemic the course will run virtually. All lectures, exercise sessions, and labs sessions will take place in Zoom. See their respective pages for more information.

Learning objectives and syllabus

After completion of the course the student is expected to be able to

  • describe the possibilities and limitations of both informal and formal techniques for the discovery, analysis, and resolving of program errors
  • describe the concept of precise specifications of software units
  • discuss the principles of verification
  • express precise specifications of software units
  • characterize inputs on which a program fails
  • locate, analyse, and fix the error which caused the failure
  • formally reason about simple programs for guaranteeing correctness
  • judge the various error tracing and prevention practices they encounter
  • contribute to the development and improvement of error removal and prevention techniques in a given context
  • follow up on, and take advantage of, conceptual and technical developments in the area of testing, debugging, and verification that go beyond the exact techniques covered in the course

Link to the syllabus Chalmers
Link to the syllabus GU

Course literature

There are no mandatory books that students must buy, nor is there any single textbook covering all the content of this course. However, as a complement to the course slides, the following books which are available as e-books from Chalmers Library might be helpful:

The course uses several software tools. A collection of documentation and online references to these tools can be found on the Tools page.

Examination form

The course is examined by a final individual written exam, 5.0 hec, and laboratories (practical hand-in assignments), 2.5 hec. The laboratories must be done in groups of 2-3 students. Instructions for labs will be posted during the course.

In case a practical hand-in assignment is not passed in the first attempt, the student is granted a second try, to be submitted within one week. Labs can only be assessed during the study period in which the course is given, i.e. must be completed before the January exam.

The exam and the labs can be passed independently. However, to pass the course both the labs and exam must have been passed. In case of a pass, the final course grade is determined by the final exam.

The final grade is given on the standard scale for the respective universities: U (fail), 3, 4, 5 for Chalmers students and Fail, Pass (G), Pass with Distinction (VG) for GU students.

Exam Dates

Regular exam:  12 Jan 2021 at 8.30

Re-exam:  09 Apr 2021 at 14.00

Exam paper format

The written exam will be divided into a Part A (basic learning outcomes) and a Part B (advanced questions). All students must pass Part A to pass the exam and get the grade 3/G. Only students aiming for higher grades(4, 5/VG) must in addition pass Part B. 

Any examination outside the two standard exam dates given above will only examine the basic learning outcomes (graded as Fail or 3). This is due to the limited number of hours allocated to teachers for the whole course. We want to spend those hours primarily on student teaching, and designing multiple exams per year takes considerable time away from actual teaching and contact with students. Student wishing to sit a re-examination in August 2021 should expect an oral examination via Zoom, and must sign up by emailing the examiner (Moa Johansson) before the summer holidays, no later than 2 July 2021. To avoid unnecessary work in exam question design, administration etc, please only sign up if you definitely intend to sit the exam. If no students have signed up by 2 July, the August opportunity will be cancelled.

Student representatives and feedback

Students are welcome to provide feedback on the course to either the student representatives or directly to the teacher. For contact details, see Student Representatives.

Course summary:

Date Details Due