Test automation has been an acknowledged software engineering best practice for years. However, the topic involves more than the repeated execution of test cases that often comes first to mind. Simply running test cases using a unit testing framework is no longer enough for test automation to keep up with the ever-shorter release cycles driven by continuous deployment and technological innovations such as microservices and DevOps pipelines. Now test automation needs to rise to the next level by going beyond mere test execution. The NEXTA workshop will explore how to advance test automation to further contribute to software quality in the context of tomorrow's rapid release cycles. Takeaways for industry practitioners and academic researchers will encompass test case generation, automated test result analysis, test suite assessment and maintenance, and infrastructure for the future of test automation.
NEXTA solicits the following types of original papers:

Technical Papers (max. 8 pages in IEEE format). Full papers presenting research results or industrial practices related to the next generation of test automation.
Position and Experience Papers (max. 4 pages in IEEE format). Short papers introducing challenges, visions, positions, or preliminary results within the scope of the workshop. Experience reports and papers on open challenges in the industry are especially welcome.
Tool Papers (max. 4 pages in IEEE format). Tool papers introduce tools that implement an approach to support the transition to the next generation of test automation. A tool paper submission must include either 1) a URL to a screencast of the tool in action, or 2) a runnable version of the tool for evaluation by the program committee.

List of Topics
Test execution automation
Test case generation
Automatic test design generation
Analytics, learning, and big data in relation to test automation
Automatic aspects management in test, progress, reporting, planning, etc.
Visualization of test
Evolution of test automation
Test suite architecture and infrastructure
Test environment, simulation, and other contextual issues for automated testing
Test tools, frameworks, and general support for test automation
Testing in an agile and continuous integration context, and testing within DevOps
Orchestration of test
Metrics, benchmarks, and estimation on any type of test automation
Any type of test technology relying on automation of test
Process improvements and assessments related to test automation
Test automation maturity and experience reports on test automation
Automatic retrieval of test data and test preparation aspect
Maintainability, monitoring, and refactoring of automated test suites
Training and education on automated testing
Automated test for product lines and high-variability systems
Test automation patterns
Automated test oracles
Committees
Program Committee
Sahar Tahvili, Ericsson AB, Sweden, sahar.tahvili@ericsson.com
Vahid Garousi, Queens University of Belfast, UK, v.garousi@qub.ac.uk
Kristian Sandahl, Linköpings University, Sweden, kristian.sandahl@liu.se
Michael Felderer, University of Innsbruck, Austria,Michael.Felderer@uibk.ac.at
Jeremy Bradbury, Ontario Tech University, Canada, Jeremy.Bradbury@ontariotechu.ca
Sigrid Eldh, Ericsson AB, Sweden, sigrid.eldh@ericsson.com
Organizing committee
Sahar Tahvili, Ericsson AB, Sweden, sahar.tahvili@ericsson.com
Vahid Garousi, Queens University of Belfast, UK, v.garousi@qub.ac.uk
Kristian Sandahl, Linköpings University, Sweden, kristian.sandahl@liu.se
Michael Felderer, University of Innsbruck, Austria,Michael.Felderer@uibk.ac.at
Jeremy Bradbury, Ontario Tech University, Canada, Jeremy.Bradbury@ontariotechu.ca
Publication
Submissions will be received through EasyChair and reviewed by at least three members of the program committee for quality and relevance. Submissions that are not in compliance with the required submission format or that are out of the scope of the workshop will be rejected without being reviewed. Every submission will be reviewed by at least one PC member from the industry. We plan to invite a mix of academic researchers and practitioners from the industry to the NEXTA program committee.

List of the accepted papers:

1-Yanwei Ren, Youda Gu, Zongqing Ma, Hualiang Zhu and Fei Yin: Cross-Device Difference Detector for Mobile Application GUI Compatibility Testing
2-Qi Zhan, You Wu, Haipeng Qu and Xiaoqi Zhao: AcoFuzz: Adaptive Energy Allocation for Greybox Fuzzing
3-Felix Schuckert, Basel Katt and Hanno Langweg: Generation of PHP vulnerability test cases for XSS and SQLi
4-Mikael Ebrahimi Salari, Eduard Enoiu, Wasif Afzal and Cristina Seceleanu: Choosing a Test Automation Framework for Programmable Logic Controllers in CODESYS Development Environment
5-Mika Mäntylä, Martin Varela and Shayan Hashemi: Pinpointing Anomaly Events in Logs from Stability Testing - N-Grams vs. Deep-Learning
6-Azeem Ahmad, Erik Norrestam Held, Ola Leifler and Kristian Sandahl: Identifying Randomness related Flaky Tests through Divergence and Execution Tracing
7-Aftab Hussain and Mohammad Amin Alipour: Removing Uninteresting Bytes in Software Fuzzing
8- Qusay Idrees Sarhan, Tamás Gergely and Árpád Beszédes: New Ranking Formulas to Improve Spectrum Based Fault Localization Via Systematic Search


Venue
The conference will be held Online on April 8, 2022.

Contact
All questions about submissions should be emailed to sahar.tahvili@ericsson.com