Web application testing as an automated service

在最近的Web 2.0技术的推动下，人们越来越多地使用Web作为编程平台。然而，由于Web应用程序的分布式和动态特性，测试它们仍然是一项主要手动和艰巨的任务。因此，这种应用程序的可靠性风险变得越来越大。 该项目旨在研究如何以更可行和互动的方式向Web开发人员提供软件测试。其目的是通过实验研究新的方法，最大限度地提高测试自动化，并最大限度地减少所需的努力，以表达所需的程序行为进行测试。特别是，该项目提出提供Web测试作为一个交互式的自动化服务，其中Web应用程序自动执行在一个真实的浏览器，以推断运行时的意见。 这些观察结果随后由用户扩充并用于生成测试用例。挑战包括自动分析和推断Web程序行为，并生成强大的回归比较器。 该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 运行时结构和代码级观察;（2）生成健壮和可重用测试套件以防止回归的新方法;（3）实现可以作为自动化服务完全访问的原型框架;以及（4）通过交互式可视化技术使Web开发人员参与分析和测试过程。 通过对开源和工业系统的一系列案例研究，实证评估将侧重于开发的方法是否有助于提高Web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也是如此。

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.