Improved automated tools for software testing

软件应用程序，尤其是基于web的应用程序，通常由许多组件构成；常见组件包括web浏览器、web应用服务器、数据库和业务逻辑实体。每个组件都可以使用不同的语言来指定功能。增加复杂性的一个因素是系统组件可能有几个版本；例如，Internet Explorer和Mozilla Firefox是正在使用的两种浏览器，对于每一种浏览器，通常都有几个版本号在使用。对于各种各样的技术，确保所有这些组件都可以成功地集成到工作应用程序中是一项挑战。这项工作旨在解决这一挑战的两个方面。第一个是研究基于组件的应用程序的设计人员可以关注功能而不是组件使用的各种语言的方法。也就是说，确定自动化工具帮助从模型自动生成应用程序部分的机会。第二是改进基于组件的应用程序的测试和可测试性。测试组件需要能够控制组件并观察其行为，但是当组合成一个完整的系统时，一些组件可能难以访问。这项工作将开发方法和工具，以改进对基于web的应用程序接口的访问。它还将继续之前为交互测试选择测试配置的工作，以便实现组件版本组合的可测量覆盖。

Software applications, especially web-based applications, are typically constructed from a number of components; common components are web browsers, web application servers, data bases, and business logic entities.  Each of these components may use a different language to specify the functionality. An added element of complexity is that there may be several versions of system components; for example, Internet Explorer and Mozilla Firefox are two of the browsers in use, and for each of those browsers, there are typically several version numbers in use.With a diverse range of technology, ensuring that all these components can be integrated successfully into a working application is a challenge.This work aims to address two aspects of this challenge.  The first is to investigate ways that designers of component-based applications can focus on the functionality instead of the various languages used by the components.  That is, identify opportuntities for automated tools to assist in automatically generating parts of applications from models.The second is to improve the testing and testability of component based applications.  Testing components requires being able to control the component and observe its behaviour, but when combined into a complete system, some components may be difficult to access.  This work will develop methods and tools to improve access to the interfaces of web-based applications. It will also continue previous work on selecting test configurations for interaction testing, in order to achieve measurable coverage of combinations of component versions.