Web application testing as an automated service

在最近的Web 2.0技术的推动下，人们越来越多地将Web用作编程平台。然而，由于Web应用程序的分布式和动态特性，测试它们在很大程度上仍然是一项令人生畏的手动任务。因此，这类应用程序的可靠性风险变得越来越大。 这个项目的目的是研究如何以更可行和更具互动性的方式向Web开发人员提供软件测试。其目的是通过实验研究最大化测试自动化和最小化表达测试所需的程序行为所需的工作量的新方法。特别是，该项目建议将Web测试作为一种交互式自动化服务提供，其中Web应用程序在真实的浏览器中自动执行以推断运行时观察。 这些观察结果随后由用户增强，并用于生成测试用例。挑战包括自动分析和推断网络程序行为，以及生成稳健的回归比较器。 拟议研究的成功完成将建立一种新的分析和测试方法 对于Web应用程序领域。主要创新包括(1)自动查找的新技术 (2)用于生成健壮和可重复使用的测试套件的新方法，以防止回归；(3)实现可完全作为自动化服务访问的原型框架；以及(4)通过交互式可视化技术使网络开发人员参与分析和测试过程。 通过一系列关于开放源码和工业系统的案例研究进行的经验评估将侧重于所开发的方法是否有助于提高网络应用程序的可靠性。这将对Web测试实践产生重大影响，不仅对Web开发人员，而且对专业软件测试人员都是如此。

Facilitated by recent Web 2.0 technologies, people are increasingly using the web as a programming platform. Yet, due to the distributed and dynamic nature of web applications, testing them is still a largely manual and daunting task. Consequently, the dependability risks of such applications become progressively significant. This project aims to study how software testing can be made readily available to web developers in a more feasible and interactive way. The intent is to experimentally investigate new ways of maximizing test automation and minimizing the effort required to express the desired program behavior for testing. In particular, this project proposes to provide web testing as an interactive automated service, in which the web application is automatically executed in a real browser to infer run-time observations. These observations are subsequently augmented by the user and used to generate test cases. The challenges consist of automatically analyzing and inferring web program behavior and generating robust regression comparators. Successful completion of the proposed research will establish a novel analysis and testing method for the domain of web applications. Key innovations include (1) new techniques for automatically finding run-time structural and code-level observations; (2) new methods for generating robust and reusable test suites to prevent regressions; (3) implementation of a prototype framework that can be entirely accessed as an automated service; and (4) engaging web developers in the analysis and testing process through interactive visualization techniques. The empirical evaluation, through a range of case studies on open-source and industrial systems, will focus on whether the developed methods contribute to increasing web application dependability. The impact will be significant on web testing practice, not only for web developers, but also for professional software testers.