On the Effectiveness of Automatically Inferred Invariants in Detecting Regression Faults in Spreadsheets

Sohon Roy, Arie Van Deursen, Felienne Hermans

Research output: Chapter in Book / Report / Conference proceedingConference contributionAcademicpeer-review

Abstract

Automatically inferred invariants have been found to be successful in detecting regression faults in traditional software, but their application has not been explored in the context of spreadsheets. In this paper, we investigate the effectiveness of automatically inferred invariants in detecting regression faults in spreadsheets. We conduct an exploratory empirical study on eight spreadsheets taken from VEnron and EUSES corpora. We apply automatic invariant inference to them, create tests based on the inferred invariants, and finally seed the sheets with faults. Results indicate that the effectiveness of the inferred invariants, in terms of accuracy of fault detection, largely varies from spreadsheet to spreadsheet. The effectiveness is found to be affected by the formulas and data contained in the spreadsheets, and also by the type of faults to be detected.

Original languageEnglish
Title of host publicationProceedings - 2018 IEEE 18th International Conference on Software Quality, Reliability, and Security Companion, QRS-C 2018
PublisherInstitute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers Inc.
Pages199-206
Number of pages8
ISBN (Print)9781538678398
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 9 Aug 2018
Externally publishedYes
Event18th IEEE International Conference on Software Quality, Reliability, and Security Companion, QRS-C 2018 - Lisbon, Portugal
Duration: 16 Jul 201820 Jul 2018

Publication series

NameProceedings - 2018 IEEE 18th International Conference on Software Quality, Reliability, and Security Companion, QRS-C 2018

Conference

Conference18th IEEE International Conference on Software Quality, Reliability, and Security Companion, QRS-C 2018
Country/TerritoryPortugal
CityLisbon
Period16/07/1820/07/18

Keywords

  • End-user Development
  • Fault Detection
  • Invariant Analysis
  • Regression Faults
  • Software Quality
  • Spreadsheets

Fingerprint

Dive into the research topics of 'On the Effectiveness of Automatically Inferred Invariants in Detecting Regression Faults in Spreadsheets'. Together they form a unique fingerprint.

Cite this