Web-CAT / News: Recent posts

A new version of the WAR distribution of Web-CAT is now available. It includes the latest version of all subsystems, including the new BIRT-based reporting engine--previously installable as a separate download. As always, the war is completely self-updating once installed.

Following our successful CxxTest plug-in for Eclipse, we have now ported our CxxTest support to Visual Studio and released as an MSI package. This Visual Studio package allows students (or developers) to create and run CxxTests from within Visual Studio, including a test class creation wizard, easy choices about which test case(s) to run, automatic generation of CxxTest runners, and a graphical display of test case results. Failing test cases drop you right into the debugger at the point of failure. Take a look!

Our electronic submission plug-in for student projects has been ported to Visual Studio and released as an MSI package. This Visual Studio package allows students to electronically submit projects--to Web-CAT, or to any other collection service. You don't have to use Web-CAT to use this extension. Take a look!

Web-CAT (as of v1.3.0) no longer requires a separate WebObjects license to install and run, so it is now completely free to use. This latest release includes the newest auto-update infrastructure support and many new improvements. See http://web-cat.cs.vt.edu/WCWiki/WebCatChangeHistory for more details.

The v1.2.4 release now supports easy installation under Mac OS X, using the WebObjects distribution that Apple supplies for use on that operating system. This version also incorporates the latest updates to all subsystems.

Stephen Edwards received the 2006 XCaliber Award for Web-CAT. The XCaliber Award is awarded annually by the Center for Innovation in Learning at Virginia Tech in recognition of the outstanding contributions to learning that faculty and staff are making as they develop courseware through technology.

For more on this story, see:
http://www.cs.vt.edu/whatsnews/2006_xcaliber_individual_award.html

This release contains many bug fixes and enhancements to the CxxTest framework code and the plugins. Please see the changelog for more details.

The final release of version 1.2.0 is now out. It includes full automatic update support for installed subsystems, so that new releases will self-download and self-install. These features are controlled via the Administer tab. There is also a new Plug-ins tab for managing and configuring grading plug-ins.

The first public release of Web-CAT is now available via Sourceforge. The release is packaged as a WAR file suitable for installation under Apache Tomcat or another appropriate servlet container.

The servlet has a built-in self-installation wizard that triggers the first time you visit the application. Web-CAT will walk you through its setup process, including setting the database connection information, creating database tables, setting up authentication, creating an administrator account, and even pre-populating its data model with some sample data.... read more

Stephen Edwards will be giving a workshop at SIGCSE 2006 on adding software testing to programming assignments (http://db.grinnell.edu/sigcse/sigcse2006/Program/viewAcceptedProposal.asp?sessionType=workshop&sessionNumber=45). This workshop will cover the teaching aspects of writing assignments that incorporate testing, although he'll also be happy to talk with participants about how to use automated grading tools as well.

We're participating in a birds-of-a-feather discussion on automated grading systems at SIGCSE 2006 this March (http://www.cs.rit.edu/~sigcse06/). The BOF is called "Toward a Common Automated Grading Platform", and is targeted at identifying the major roadblocks to creating a generally-adoptable automated grading system.

We are presenting a paper at the 2005 Eclipse Technology Exchange Workshop at OOPSLA. This paper summarizes the Eclipse side of our development efforts. You can view this paper, and our other publications, from our publications page: http://web-cat.cs.vt.edu/WCWiki/OurPublications.