VASTT logo

Verification and Analysis
using
Slicing, Testing and Transformation

VASTT logo

The VASTT group's work is concerned with extraction, modification and verification of systems and their components, primarily using techniques associated with slicing, testing and transformation.

The group is a collection of London-based academics and researchers who meet at one of the participating colleges for informal seminars and workshops organised on an ad hoc basis. The group tends to use some slang, but there is a glossary of terms.

If you would like to become involved please contact Mark Harman.



Current Members

Kostas Adamopoulos
Sebastian Danicic, Lecturer, Goldsmiths
Dave Daoudi, Research Student, Goldsmiths
Karnig Derderian, Research Student, Brunel
Amnon Eden, Lecturer, Essex
Deji Fatiregun, Research Student, Brunel
Chris Fox, Reader, Essex
Larry Qiang Guo, Research Student, Brunel
Mark Harman, Professor, King's College
Rob Hierons, Professor, Brunel
John Howroyd, Lecturer, Goldsmiths
Lin Hu, Research Fellow, King's College
Derek Jones, Knowledge Software Ltd.
Kalpesh Kapoor, Research Student, Southbank University
Mike Laurence, Research Assistant, Liverpool
(AKA - with his head still in the clouds - Mike Laurence, Research Student, Goldsmiths)
Zheng Li, Research Assistant, King's College
Kiarash Mahdavi, Research Student, Brunel
Lahcen Ouarbya, Research Student, Goldsmiths
Ranjit Singh, Research Student, Brunel
Bala Sivagurunathan, Research Student, UNL
Yoga Sivagurunathan, Research Student, UNL
Martin Ward, Senior Research Fellow, DeMontfort

This is the global VASTT page for the group. Some of the member organisations maintain their own local VASTT pages. These are currently available for Goldsmiths College. The Brunel contingent, also have their own group, which works on closely related topics and is called ATeSST.

Projects

As well as the projects listed below, members of the VASTT team often have bursary-funded research studentship positions available.

GAMUT
GASE
GUSTT
SEMINAL
INSPIRE
FORTEST
TeTra

Collaborators

Italicised names are links to homepages, other links are `mailto' links.

Martin Aylett BT Labs, UK
Ira Baxter Semantic Designs, USA
David Binkley Loyola College, Maryland, USA
Len Bottaci Hull University, UK
Colin Burgess Bristol University, UK
Simon Burton University of York, UK
Gerardo Canfora University of Sannio, Italy
John Clarke York University, UK
David Corne Reading University, UK
Andrea De Lucia University of Sannio, Italy
David Dill Stanford University, USA
Terry Druce BAe, UK
Mike Ernst MIT, USA
Alvaro Fernandes University of Manchester, UK
Keith Gallagher Loyola College, Maryland, USA
Mike Holcombe Sheffield University, UK
Bryan Jones University of Glamorgan, UK
Derek Jones Knowledge Software, UK
Arun Lakhotia Center for Advanced Computer Studies, University of Southwestern Louisiana, USA
Martin Lefley Bournemouth University, UK
Rudi Lutz Sussex University, UK
Mary Lumkin BT Labs, UK
Malcolm Munro University of Durham, UK
Thomas Noll Royal Institute of Technology, Sweden
Martin Oates BT Labs, UK
Larry Paulson Cambridge University, UK
Robin Perkins BAe, UK
Kearton Rees BT Labs, UK
Stuart Reid Royal Military College of Science, Cranfield University, UK
Marc Roper Strathclyde University, UK
Sadegh Sadeghipour Daimler-Chrysler, Berlin, Germany
Martin Shepperd Bournemouth University, UK
Dan Simpson University of Brighton, UK
Harbhajan Singh Daimler-Chrysler, Berlin, Germany
Harmen Sthamer Daimler-Chrysler, Berlin, Germany
Nigel Tracey University of York, UK
Joachim Wegener Daimler-Chrysler, Berlin, Germany
Elaine Weyuker AT&T Labs, USA
Shirley Williams Reading University, UK
Martin Woodward Liverpool University, UK

VASTT Diary


Thursday 24th June 1999, at Goldsmiths
Sebastian Danicic, Chris Fox, Mark Harman, Rob Hierons, Mike Laurence

Thursday 21st October 1999, at Goldsmiths
David Binkley, Sebastian Danicic, Chris Fox, Mark Harman, Rob Hierons, John Howroyd, Mike Laurence

Wednesday 26th Jan 2000, at Goldsmiths
Sebastian Danicic, Chris Fox, Mark Harman, Rob Hierons, Lin Hu, Mike Laurence

Friday 18th Feb 2000, at Goldsmiths
Sebastian Danicic, Chris Fox, Mark Harman, Rob Hierons, John Howroyd, Lin Hu, Mike Laurence

Friday 25th Feb 2000, at Goldsmiths
Sebastian Danicic, Mark Harman, Rob Hierons, John Howroyd, Lin Hu, Mike Laurence

Monday 13th March 2000, at Goldsmiths
Sebastian Danicic, Chris Fox, Mark Harman, Rob Hierons, John Howroyd, Lin Hu, Mike Laurence, Thomas Noll

Wednesday 22nd March 2000, at Goldsmiths
Mark Harman, Rob Hierons, John Howroyd, Mike Laurence, Elaine Weyuker

Wednesday 24th May, 2000, at Goldsmiths
Sebastian Danicic, Chris Fox, Mark Harman, Rob Hierons, Lin Hu, Mike Laurence

Wednesday 28th July 2000, at Goldsmiths
Sebastian Danicic, Chris Fox, Mark Harman, Rob Hierons, John Howroyd, Lin Hu, Mike Laurence

Wednesday 2nd August 2000, at Goldsmiths
Sebastian Danicic, Chris Fox, Mark Harman, Rob Hierons, John Howroyd, Lin Hu, Mike Laurence

Wednesday 23rd August 2000, at Goldsmiths
Sebastian Danicic, Chris Fox, Mark Harman, John Howroyd, Lin Hu, Mike Laurence

Wednesday 6th September 2000, at Goldsmiths
Sebastian Danicic, Chris Fox, Mark Harman, John Howroyd, Mike Laurence, Francis Lin, Nikolay Nikolaev

Wednesday 27th September 2000, at Goldsmiths
Sebastian Danicic, Chris Fox, Mark Harman, John Howroyd

Tuesday 21st November 2000, at Goldsmiths
Sebastian Danicic, Dave Daoudi, Chris Fox, Mark Harman, Rob Hierons, John Howroyd, Mike Laurence, Lahcen Ouarbya

Wednesday 6th December 2000, at Brunel
agenda.
Sebastian Danicic, Dave Daoudi, Rani Ettinger, Chris Fox, Mark Harman, Rob Hierons, Lin Hu, Lahcen Ouarbya

Thursday 25th January 2001, at Goldsmiths
Sebastian Danicic, Dave Daoudi, Chris Fox, Mark Harman, John Howroyd, Lahcen Ouarbya

Thursday 19th April 2001, at Goldsmiths
agenda.
Sebastian Danicic, Dave Daoudi, Chris Fox, Mark Harman, Rob Hierons, John Howroyd, Lin Hu, Lahcen Ouarbya, Mike Laurence

Wednesday 23rd May 2001, at KCL
Sebastian Danicic, Dave Daoudi, Chris Fox, Mark Harman, Rob Hierons, Lahcen Ouarbya, Mike Laurence
(Co-located with Jon Bowen's talk.

VASTT Workshop: Monday and Tuesday 4th and 5th June 2001, at Brunel
agenda.
Sebastian Danicic, Dave Daoudi, Chris Fox, Mark Harman, Rob Hierons, Lin Hu, Lahcen Ouarbya, Mike Laurence, Martin Ward
Martin Ward visited and we started work on a simple slicing transformation for WSL. We hope to extend this slicer to handle full WSL soon.
A group photo of this meeting is also available.

VASTT Workshop: Wednesday 20th June 2001, at Goldsmiths
Ira Baxter, Sebastian Danicic, Chris Fox, Mark Harman, Rob Hierons, Lin Hu, John Howroyd
Ira Baxter from Semantic Designs took time out from his Holiday in England to explain the DMS transformation system.
A group photo of this meeting is also available.

Tuesday 10th July 2001 , at KCL
Sebastian Danicic, Chris Fox, Mark Harman, Rob Hierons
There is a Group Photo.

VASTT Workshop: Tuesday 24th July 2001, at Brunel
agenda.
Mike Ernst from MIT Laboratory for Computer Science visited to tell give us the latest on his Daikon work.
Mike Kindly allowed me to make available the slides from the talks he gave on Diakon and refactoring using Diakon.
Derek Jones from Knowledge Software, also visited and talked to us about his 19 years of developing source Code Analysis tools and his experiences in selling them.
There is a Group Photo.

VASTT Workshop: Thursday 20th September 2001, at Brunel
agenda.
With a sort of Psychology of Programming theme.
Costin Badica, Jarinee Chattratichart, Chris Fox, Mark Harman, Rob Hierons, Lin Hu, Derek Jones, Jasna Kuljis, Lahcen Ouarbya, Mike Laurence, George Magoulas, Kiarash Mahdavi
There is a Group Photo, but not everyone made it for the photocall.

2nd-5th October 2001
Mark went to WCRE and AST and gave talks about our work on Amorphous slicing and Blobbing (aka node coarsening). Pictures will be available soon.

Wednesday 10th October, 2001
Mark gave a seminar on slicing at Hull University.

15th-24th October 2001
Lin went to give several slicing talks in China.

Tuesday 16th October 2001
Chris is gave a talk at Royal Holloway on Conditioned Slicing. Details are available.

Wednesday 17th October 2001, at Goldsmiths
agenda.
Sebastian Danicic, Dave Daoudi, Chris Fox, Andrew Garrard, Mark Harman, Rob Hierons, John Howroyd, Bill Langdon, Nikolay Nikolaev, Lahcen Ouarbya, Mike Laurence
Bill Langdon visited us to talk about Genetic Programming.
Andrew Garrard from KCL also visited and told us about his re-implementation of ConSIT.
A photo is available.

Friday 2nd November 2001, at KCL
agenda.
Costin Badica, Len Bottaci, Dave Binkley, Dave Daoudi, Chris Fox, Mark Harman, Lin Hu, Rob Hierons, Lahcen Ouarbya, Bala Sivagurunathan, Yoga Sivagurunathan
Dave Binkley visited us to talk about amorphous slicing using the SDG and semantic differencing using the a modified version of the SDG interprocedural slicing algorithm.
Len Bottaci from Hull University, Computer Science Department also came and talked about mutation testing and selective mutation..
A photo is available.

3rd-11th November 2001
Dave, Lahcen, Mark and Lin went to ICSM, WESS and SCAM in Florence.

21st-22nd November 2001
Rob held a TESTFOR network meeting at Brunel.

Friday 23rd November 2001
Rob gave a seminar on X-machines at Sheffield University.

Monday 3rd December 2001, at Goldsmiths
agenda.
VASTT slicing and transforming WSL workshop.
Sebastian Danicic, Rani Ettinger, Mark Harman, Mike Laurence, Martin Ward.
Martin Ward visited to show us his WSL slicer, based upon basic blocks and SSA. Rani Ettinger also visited.
A photo is available.

12th-14th December 2001
Mark and Lin visited Durham University to give talks on slicing and testability transformation.

16th-18th December 2001
Mark and Chris visited DaimlerChrysler to discuss development of the Variable Dependence for Search-Space Reduction project.

Monday 7th January 2002, at Brunel
agenda.
Dave Daoudi, Chris Fox, Mark Harman, Rob Hierons, Lin Hu, Lahcen Ouarbya, Jianhua Shao, Derek Jones.
A photo is available.
Slicing and transforming Databases
Jianhua Shao from Cardiff University, Department of Computer Science visited and presented work on the BRULEE project.

Wednesday 23rd January 2002, at Goldsmiths
Schema Workshop
Mike outlined his approach to showing decidability of equivalence for LFL schemas. John outlined his approach to deciding freeness of linear schemas.
Sebastian Danicic, Mark Harman, Rob Hierons, John Howroyd Mike Laurence

Thursday 7th February 2002, at Brunel
WSL Workshop
Martin Ward will be visiting again and we will talk about the use of the transformation rule `Simplify' in FermaT, and how it can be enhanced for use by amorphous and conditioned slicing. The general theme of this workshop is transformation and, in particular, transformation using FermaT.
agenda.
Sebastian Danicic, Dave Daoudi, Mark Harman, Rob Hierons, Lin Hu, Lahcen Ouarbya, Kiarash Mahdavi, Martin Ward.

Wednesday and Thursday 13th and 14th March 2002, at Brunel
GUSTT/VASTT joint workshop.
Theme: Machine-checked Verification of Transformations
Xingyuan Zhang and Malcolm Munro from Durham University will be visiting. Xingyuan showed us how he is using Coq to formalise and prove properties of WSL transformations. Coq allows these to be machine checked.
Sebastian Danicic, Dave Daoudi, Chris Fox, Mark Harman, Rob Hierons, Lin Hu, Mike Laurence, Kiarash Mahdavi, Lahcen Ouarbya and Xingyuan Zhang.
agenda.

Thursday 23rd May at Brunel
agenda.
Dave Binkley visited us again and talked about empirical studies of debugging and the SDG slicing algorithm.
Dave Binkley, Sebastian Danicic, Dave Daoudi, Chris Fox, Mark Harman, Rob Hierons, Lin Hu, Derek Jones, George Margoulas, Kiarash Mahdavi, Stephen Swift.
A photo is available.

Monday 24th June 2002, at Brunel
agenda.
Theme: Testing and Transformation
Gregg Rothermel from Oregon State University, USA visited. Tom Dean from Queen's University, Canada also visited. Also Hasan Ural was visiting Rob, and also attended and Kalpesh Kapoor from CAFM from SBU joined us. Mike Laurence managed to phone up in the middle of the meeting too.
Sebastian Danicic, Tom Dean, Mark Harman, Rob Hierons, Lin Hu, Kalpesh Kapoor, Kiarash Mahdavi, Lahcen Ouarbya, Gregg Rothermel and Hasan Ural.
A group photo is available. There is also a photo of lunch and of Gregg expanding on test case prioritisation.

Tuesday 10th September 2002, at Brunel
Helen Bland, Jon Hart, Andrew Lees and Mark Hylton from the EPSRC visited the group to explain the EPSRC funding strategy and to find out about the work of the group.
Helen Bland, Sebastian Danicic, Chris Fox, Mark Harman, Jon Hart, Rob Hierons, Lin Hu, Mark Hylton, Andrew Lees, Kiarash Mahdavi, Lahcen Ouarbya.
A photo is available.

Wednesday 16th October 2002, at Goldsmiths
agenda.
Sebastian Danicic, Dave Daoudi, Karnig Derderian, Chris Fox, Larry Guo, Mark Harman, Lahcen Ouarbya, Kalpesh Kapoor.
A group photo is available.

Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday 18th, 19th, 20th and 21st November 2002, at Brunel
Joint VASTT/GUSTT workshop.
Themes:-
Monday 18th : GUSTT: Review of project, next steps etc.
Tuesday 19th: GUSTT: Research Talks
Wednesday 20th: VASTT: Obfuscation (Reverse reverse engineering) and source code analysis
Thursday 21st: VASTT: Schemas
Ganesh Sittampalam and Stephen Drape from the Programming Tools Group at OUCL will be visiting us.
There is an agenda with timings for the whole four days.
Sebastian Danicic, Stephen Drape, Deji Fatiregun, Chris Fox, Larry Guo, Mark Harman, Rob Hierons, John Howroyd, Lin Hu, Derek Jones, Kalpesh Kapoor, Jasna Kuljis, Mike Laurence, Kiarash Mahdavi, Malcolm Munro, Ganesh Sittampalam, Xingyuan Zhang.
A photo is available; not quite everyone made it for the photocall.

Thursday 5th December, at Goldsmiths
Sebastian Danicic, Dave Daoudi, Karnig Derderian, Mark Harman, Rob Hierons, Kalpesh Kapoor.
There is an agenda.
A photo is available; Dave Daoudi didn't make it for the photocall this time.

January 1st 2003: Mark, Rob and Chris are invited to join the EPSRC college.

January 23rd 2003, at Brunel
Theme: Theorem Proving for program analysis
Andrew Ireland from Heriot-Watt visited to tell us about his work on Proof Critics and NuSPARK.
A powerpoint copy of the slides from Andrew's talk is available.
Amnon Eden and Norbert Voelker from Essex University, Department of Computer Science also came; it was their first VASTT meeting.
Sebastian Danicic, Dave Daoudi, Karnig Derderian, Amnon Eden, Deji Fatiregun, Chris Fox, Larry Guo, Mark Harman, Rob Hierons, Lin Hu, Andrew Ireland, Kalpesh Kapoor, Ranjit Singh, Norbert Voelker.
There is an agenda
A photo is available. I am told that this version of the picture looks better on some monitors.

April 14th 2003, at Brunel
Theme: Search Based Software Engineering
Joachim Wegener, the director of the DaimlerChrysler software testing team (see here for details) visited to tell us about the DaimlerChrysler test data generation systems, which used state-of-the-art genetic algorithm techniques for test data generation according to a variety of test adequacy criteria.
We also had first time visits from Neil Walkinshaw and Kostas Adamopoulos.
Kostas Adamopoulos, Sebastian Danicic, Deji Fatiregun, Chris Fox, Larry Guo, Mark Harman, Lin Hu, Kalpesh Kapoor, Kiarash Mahdavi, Lahcen Ouarbya, Ranjit Singh, Neil Walkinshaw, Joachim Wegener.
There is an agenda.
A photo is available.

November 26th 2003, at Brunel
Theme: Search Based Software Engineering
Mark Bishop from Goldsmiths joined us to tell us about Stochastic Diffusion Processes (a new search technique).
We also had a first time visit from Christine Peters, Media Logic, Ltd. and Daniel Rodriques from Reading University, Applied Software Engineering group.
Kostas Adamopoulos, Mark Bishop, Sebastian Danicic, Karnig Dederian, Deji Fatiregun, Larry Guo, Mark Harman, Lin Hu, Kiarash Mahdavi, Daniel Rodriques, Christine Peters.
There is an agenda.
A photo is available.

b>January 28th 2004, at Brunel
Theme: Abstract Interpretation
Andy King from the University of Kent will be visiting us to tell us about abstract interpretation. The meeting will explore links between abstract interpretation, slicing, transformation and program schemas.
There are also plans to have a larger meeting on abstract interpretation later on. This meeting will include a tutorial which Andy has kindly agreed to present to us. This will be a good opportunity for those who do not know about abstract interpretation to learn about it.
There is an agenda.