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The objective of OSI conformance testing is to provide a standardized and rigorous means of determining the extent to which a specific implementation conforms to an OSI protocol specification. As part of its ILL Implementation Program, the National Library of Canada has developed a test system and service for the interlibrary loan (ILL) protocol using the ISO standard methodology for conformance testing (ISO 9656). Development of test suites, conformance testing tools, and conformance testing services are presented. The article also discusses related topics such as interoperability testing, arbitration testing, and international harmonization of conformance testing.

This paper aims to present the verification process conducted to assess the functional correctness of the voting system. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas (CONICET) is the most important research institution in Argentina. It depends directly from Argentina’s President but its internal authorities are elected by around 8,000 research across the country. During 2011, the CONICET developed a Web voting system to replace the traditional mail-based process. In 2012 and 2014, CONICET conducted two Web election with no complaints from candidates and voters. Before moving the system into production, CONICET asked the authors to conduct a functional and security assessment of it.

This process is the result of integrating formal, semi-formal and informal verification activities from formal proof to code inspection and model-based testing.

Given the resources and time available, a reasonable level of confidence on the correctness of the application could be transmitted to senior management.

A formal specification of the requirements must be developed.

Formal methods and semi-formal activities are seldom applied to Web applications.

This paper aims to present several Bayesian specification tests for both in- and out-of-sample situations.

The authors focus on the Bayesian equivalents of the frequentist approach for testing heteroskedasticity, autocorrelation and functional form specification. For out-of-sample diagnostics, the authors consider several tests to evaluate the predictive ability of the model.

The authors demonstrate the performance of these tests using an application on the relationship between price and occupancy rate from the hotel industry. For purposes of comparison, the authors also provide evidence from traditional frequentist tests.

There certainly exist other issues and diagnostic tests that are not covered in this paper. The issues that are addressed, however, are critically important and can be applied to most modeling situations.

With the increased use of the Bayesian approach in various modeling contexts, this paper serves as an important guide for diagnostic testing in Bayesian analysis. Diagnostic analysis is essential and should always accompany the estimation of regression models.

This paper evaluates the commonly used CPI and WPI proxies for the real exchange rate by comparing them to new measures constructed from a different data series of traded and nontraded goods prices. The tests provide mixed evidence in favor of using the general price indexes to construct measures of the real exchange rate.

IT IS OF INTEREST TO RECALL THAT while B.S. 210, issued in 1924 was the first British Standard covering mineral lubricating oils, this was not the first time that the British Standards Institution had paid attention to the petroleum industry. Earlier, in 1921 and 1923 motor spirit and benzol had been covered by B.S.121 and B.S.135 respectively. Shortly after B.S.210, further attention was paid to this field in general by the issue, in 1927, of B.S.148 and in 1929 of B.S.188. B.148 dealing with insulating oils for electrical purposes, has subsequently been revised but in the main is little changed even today. B.S.188 deals with the determination of viscosity in absolute units, a matter closely related to lubricants and of obvious interest to those engaged in lubricant testing and manufacturing control. It is in the process of revision and enlargement and a draft has just been issued for comment.

Testing is one of the indispensable activities in software development and is being adopted as an independent course by software engineering (SE) departments at universities worldwide. The purpose of this paper is to carry out an investigation of the performance of learners about testing, given the tendencies in the industry and motivation caused by the unavailability of similar studies in software testing field.

This study is based on the data collected over three years (between 2012 and 2014) from students taking the software testing course. The course is included in the second year of undergraduate curriculum for the bachelor of engineering (SE).

It has been observed that, from the performance perspective, automated testing outperforms structural and functional testing techniques, and that a strong correlation exists among these three approaches. Moreover, a strong programming background does help toward further success in structural and automated testing, but has no effect on functional testing. The results of different teaching styles within the course are also presented together with an analysis exploring the relationship between students’ gender and success in the software testing course, revealing that there is no difference in terms of performance between male and female students in the course. Moreover, it is advisable to introduce teaching concepts one at a time because students find it difficult to grasp the ideas otherwise.

These findings are based on the analysis conducted using three years of data collected while teaching a course in testing. Obviously, there are some limitations to this study. For example, student’s strength in programming is calculated using the score of C programming courses taken in previous year/semester. Such scores may not reflect their current level of programming knowledge. Furthermore, attempt was made to ensure that the exercises given for different testing techniques have similar difficulty level to guarantee that the difference in success between these testing techniques is due to the inherent complexity of the technique itself and not because of different exercises. Still, there is small probability that a certain degree of change in success may be due to the difference in the difficulty levels of the exercises. As such, it is obviously premature to consider the present results as final since there is a lack of similar type of studies, with which the authors can compare the results. Therefore, more work needs to be done in different settings to draw sound conclusions in this respect.

Although there are few studies (see e.g. Chan et al., 2005; Garousi and Zhi, 2013; Ng et al., 2004) exploring the preference of testers over distinct software testing techniques in the industry, there appears to be no paper comparing the preferences and performances of learners in terms of different testing techniques.

Increasing awareness of the consequences of device failures has resulted in increased reliance on Environmental Testing as an additional means of enhancing the integrity and reliability of a device. The key consideration is not the cost of the device itself, but the cost of subsequent failure, which can be as much as a hundred times greater. Seal tests are undertaken to ensure that moisture cannot get into the internal cavities of sealed ceramic, metal or glass packages. Seal security is vital to the long‐term reliability of all hermetically sealed devices. This paper outlines the techniques involved and the requirements of the MIL, BS and IEC specifications.

Market demands, especially within the automotive sector, are pushing towards increased product complexity and performance with zero ship parts per million (PPM) requirements. To achieve both quality and performance goals very stringent requirements are being placed on the test manufacturing solution. These requirements lead to conflicts between cost, performance and quality. The purpose of this paper is twofold: first, to investigate the conflicts that exist between quality, performance, and cost, and second, to review current practices and techniques being used in tests to minimise ship PPM.

In the paper a test process development flow chart is presented, along with a review of current methods being used for both defect screening and performance testing. The relationship between test coverage and ship PPM is investigated using established yield models. The cost in terms of gross margin degradation of yield loss at final test to extensive screening and aggressive limits is modelled.

The paper finds that to maintain ship PPM very high levels of test coverage are required – typically test coverage needs to be > 98 per cent. The cost of yield loss to this testing typically matches on a percentage point basis gross margin degradation. Reviewing current test methods shows the need both for extensive defect‐screening techniques for the defective portion of the population, and for optimised guardbanding techniques for performance testing. Weaknesses that exist are the absence of a model to predict outgoing PPM, and the conservative nature of existing guardband techniques for performance testing.

This is a review paper and it serves to highlight both the weaknesses in current practices, and areas where improved models are required.

The Marshall‐Lerner (M‐L) condition, which stipulates that a devaluation or depreciation of its currency will improve a country's trade balance only if the sum of the absolute values of a country's import and export price elasticities are greater than one, is a fundamental tenet of international economics. The purpose of this study is to survey the literature that has tested the M‐L condition, examining in particular whether previous studies' results are statistically significant. The authors then conduct their own estimation of 29 countries' trade elasticities, over the past few decades.

While mostly a review paper, the paper also applies statistical techniques in two ways. First, the authors use t‐tests on previously‐published statistical results to see if the sums of their elasticities are significantly greater than one. The authors also apply the recently developed ARDL cointegration method, which has a number of attractive statistical properties, to estimate 29 countries' long‐run import and export elasticities and test the M‐L condition using recent data.

The authors re‐estimation using previous studies' coefficients and standard errors shows that, although the point estimates in many studies suggest that the M‐L condition is met, it really is not met in half of the cases. This lack of evidence is confirmed with the authors' own empirical tests.

Not only does this paper collect the relevant literature in a way that will assist future researchers on the topic, these findings suggest that support for the M‐L condition is much weaker that commonly thought. This therefore makes an important contribution to thinking regarding the potential benefits of devaluation, and to economic theory in general.

Policymakers who hope to improve their countries' competitive position could benefit from learning that this policy is indeed less effective than might be supposed. This could lead to the implementation of more effective economic policies.

As a literature review, the originality of this paper is that it collects relevant studies into one single paper. The statistical analyses allow the reader to re‐interpret these studies' findings in a new light.

Testing business processes is crucial to assess the compliance of business process models with requirements. Automating this task optimizes testing efforts and reduces human error while also providing improvement insights for the business process modeling activity. The primary purposes of this paper are to conduct a literature review of Business Process Model and Notation (BPMN) testing and formal verification and to propose the Business Process Evaluation and Research Framework for Enhancement and Continuous Testing (bPERFECT) framework, which aims to guide business process testing (BPT) research and implementation. Secondary objectives include (1) eliciting the existing types of testing, (2) evaluating their impact on efficiency and (3) assessing the formal verification techniques that complement testing.

The methodology used is based on Kitchenham's (2004) original procedures for conducting systematic literature reviews.

Results of this study indicate that three distinct business process model testing types can be found in the literature: black/gray-box, regression and integration. Testing and verification approaches differ in aspects such as awareness of test data, coverage criteria and auxiliary representations used. However, most solutions pose notable hindrances, such as BPMN element limitations, that lead to limited practicality.

The databases selected in the review protocol may have excluded relevant studies on this topic. More databases and gray literature could also be considered for inclusion in this review.

Three main originality aspects are identified in this study as follows: (1) the classification of process model testing types, (2) the future trends foreseen for BPMN model testing and verification and (3) the bPERFECT framework for testing business processes.