Guest editors introduction: special issue on innovative automated software engineering tools

Abstract

This is the second part of our Special Issue on Innovative Automated Software Engineering Tools. Over 30 papers were submitted to the special issue, demonstrating the key role that tools have in the ASE research and practice communities. The five accepted papers appearing in this second part of the special issue underwent rigorous refereeing, major and minor revisions and then were selected for their scientific contributions. Coincidentally the papers cover an interesting range of ASE tool application areas, including model-based testing, embedded software engineering, symbolic execution and model checking, process-centred environments, and software evolution. Several of these innovative tools adopt service-based and compositional approaches to tool integration. Most have been validated not only on academic problems but also with significant industrial applications and software teams. We would like to thank very much the efforts of all authors of papers both appearing in the special issue, but also those whose work we were unable to accept. We also would like to thank the large number of referees from the automated software engineering community who we had to draw upon very heavily in this process. Finally, we thank Anand David from Springer for excellent assistance with editorial system management and production work, and Bob Hall for having the faith in us to Guest Edit this special issue.