[Om-announce] TAP 2011: Tests and Proofs

[Carlo Alberto Furia]

(Apologies for multiple postings)

			    CALL FOR PAPERS
       5th International Conference on Tests and Proofs (TAP 2011)
             http://www.tap2011.informatik.uni-bremen.de/
	          June 30 - July 1, 2011, Zuerich, Switzerland
		        Part of the TOOLS Federated Conferences 2011

The TAP conference is devoted to the convergence of proofs and tests, to
the application of techniques from both sides and their combination for
the advancement of software quality. Test and Proof seem to be
contradictory techniques: if you have proved your program to be correct,
it's fruitless to comb it for bugs; and if you are testing it, that is
surely a sign that you have given up on any hope to prove its
correctness.  Accordingly, proofs and tests have, since the onset of
software engineering research, been pursued by distinct communities.

However, the development of both approaches lead to the discovery of
common issues and to the realization that each may need the other. The
emergence of model checking has been one of the first signs that
contradiction may yield to complementarity. Further evidence give test
data generation techniques from models or programs which boil down to
constraint resolution techniques for relatively large formula; the
advent of powerful SMT solvers have therefore powered new testing
techniques.  Finally, since formal, proof-based verification is costly,
testing invariants and background theories can be helpful to detect
errors early and to improve cost effectivity.  Summing up, in the past
few years an increasing number of research efforts have encountered the
need for combining proofs and tests, dropping earlier dogmatic views of
incompatibility and taking instead the best of what each of these
software engineering domains has to offer.

The TAP conference aims to bring together researchers and practitioners
working in the converging fields of testing and proving, and will offer
a generous allocation of papers, panels and informal discussions.

Topics of interest include (other topics related to TAP are welcome):
- Transfer of concepts from testing to proving (e.g., coverage criteria)
   and from proving to testing
- Program proving with the aid of testing techniques
- Verification and testing techniques combining proofs and tests
- Generation of test data, oracles, or preambles by deductive
   techniques such as: theorem proving, model checking, symbolic
   execution, constraint logic programming
- Model-based testing and verification
- Generation of specifications by deduction
- Automatic bug finding
- Formal frameworks
- Tool descriptions and experience reports
- Case studies combining tests and proofs

Abstract submission: February 04, 2011
Paper submission: February 11, 2011
Notification: March 14, 2011
Camera ready version: March 28, 2011
TAP conference: June 30 - July 01, 2011
TOOLS conferences (TOOLS, ICMT, SC, TAP): June 27 - July 01, 2011
Conference Chairs: Yuri Gurevich, Bertrand Meyer
Program Chairs: Martin Gogolla, Burkhart Wolff
Publication Chair: Gordon Fraser
Web Chair: Lars Hamann

Program Committee:
   Nazareno Aguirre, Bernhard K. Aichernig, Paul Ammann, Benoit Baudry,
   Dirk Beyer, Nikolaj Bjoerner, Achim Brucker, Koen Claessen, Robert
   Clariso, John A. Clark, Marco Comini, Catherine Dubois, Gordon
   Fraser, Carlo Alberto Furia, Angelo Gargantini, Arnaud Gotlieb,
   Reiner Haehnle, Bart Jacobs, Thierry Jeron, Gregory Kapfhammer,
   Nikolai Kosmatov, Victor Kuliamin, Karl Meinke, Antoni Olive, Holger
   Schlingloff, T.H. Tse, Margus Veanes, Fatiha Zaidi.

Submissions (via http://www.tap2011.informatik.uni-bremen.de/):
- Research papers: full papers with at most 16 pages in LNCS format
   (pdf), which have to be original, unpublished and not submitted
   elsewhere.
- Short contributions: work in progress, (industrial) experience
   reports or tool demonstrations, position statements; an extended
   abstract with at most 6 pages in LNCS format (pdf) is expected.

Accepted papers will be published in the Springer LNCS series (details
to be confirmed) and will be available at the conference. The program
chairs are negotiating with journals about a special issue dedicated to
extended versions of selected conference papers.

The contents of previous TAP proceedings is available at:
http://www.informatik.uni-trier.de/~ley/db/conf/tap/