Title

Semi automated tests for a network programming coursework

Supervisor

Dr Ludovic Magerand

Project description

The programming project of the third year network module focus on implementing a text-

based protocol (IRC) to help students understand how protocols are defined and

implemented, especially in order to maintain interoperability with other implementations. To

ensure the compatibility of students implementations with the protocol, automated tests can

be used.

However in order to provide the marker with enough information to give students appropriate

and meaningful feedback, these tests would need to be supervised by the marker. The goal

of this project is to develop such semi-automated tests, which would need to be fully

compliant with the main protocol while allowing insight into what is causing problems when a

failure occurs. The resulting tests would also allow the marker to guide the process.

Students production are tested in two virtual machines, one acting mainly as the server and

the other one as the clients. The tests are thus distributed among them and needs to be

coordinated.

Skills the student will develop and any prerequisites

 Network programming and asynchronous event driven programming

 Distributed computing, message passing and/or RPC/RMI

 Standards and protocols specification

 Automated and Semi Automated tests

Industrial Relevance

From small to large software, fully or semi automated tests are more and more used in the

computing industry to validate functionalities. Most software nowadays also contain network

related functionalities which need to comply with existing protocols making it crucial to test

their compatibility.