Creating and Using Models for Mobile and Rich Internet Applications

所谓的“富互联网应用”(RIA)越来越多地被用于现代应用。它们能够以编程方式更新客户端，并与服务器进行异步交互。实际上，RIA是客户端-服务器应用程序，随着HTML5的更广泛适应，RIA将越来越独立。*自动推断模型(也称为对于诸如内容索引、安全测试、基于模型的测试等任务，这些RIA的“爬行”)是必要的。该领域最近的大量研究基于基于有限状态机(FSM)的模型，其中每个状态代表应用程序的一个可能的“文档对象模型”(DOM)，每个转换代表一个JavaScript事件的执行。然而，这些模型无法扩大到大多数真实的RIA的规模。*在这项研究中，我们希望改进RIA和移动应用程序的模型推理技术，以便能够处理大型、复杂的RIA，然后在自动化正式应用程序测试的上下文中使用这些模型。*第一个轴心是建立在我们的新模式之上，我们称之为“基于组件的”。其目标是将每个DOM自动分解为一组独立的组件，然后相互独立地建模。与基于DOM的模型相比，这极大地减小了模型的大小，因为它避免了这些模型固有的许多不必要的重复。我们的初步评估表明，大多数现代复杂的RIA都有许多这样的组件，使这个模型具有高度的适用性。我们将特别致力于正式定义这一新模型及其属性。我们还将专注于自动组件检测和高效建模算法。*我们的第二个轴是基于执行日志的自动用户会话重建。这提供了使用公共日志文件恢复用户离线操作的能力。这带来了几个好处，包括产生更好的模型(输入值、可能的操作序列等)，自动产生进一步自动化所需的信息(例如，为自动测试推断完整的登录序列的能力)，以及出于调试目的自动再现故障。*我们的最后一个研究轴是在正式的基于模型的测试的背景下使用这些模型。我们特别感兴趣的是在这种情况下的检查序列的生成(在给定的故障模型下，证明实现符合我们的模型的序列)。*这项研究的结果将引起研究人员和实践者的兴趣。它将允许我们在一个已经成功的研究计划上投入更多资金，使我们有机会在该领域普遍感兴趣的主题上工作，同时继续我们与IBM的短期工作。加拿大是RIA领域的研究领先者，该研究计划将加强这一地位。**

The so-called "Rich Internet Applications" (RIAs) are increasingly used for modern applications. They have the ability to update the client-side programmatically and to interact with the server asynchronously. In effect, RIAs are client-server applications, and with wider adaption of HTML5, RIAs will be increasingly stand-alone.***Automatically inferring a model (a.k.a. "crawling") for these RIAs is necessary for tasks such as content indexing, security testing, model-based testing etc. The bulk of the recent research in this domain is based on Finite State Machines (FSM)-based models, where each state represents one possible "Document Object Model" (DOM) of the application, and each transition represents the execution of one JavaScript event. However, these models are unable to scale up to the size of most real RIAs. ***In this research, we want to improve model-inference techniques for RIAs and Mobile applications to be able to handle large, complex RIAs and then use these models in the context of automated formal application testing. ***The first axis is to build upon our new model, which we have called "Component-Based". The goal is to automatically break down each DOM into a set of independent components, which are then modelled independently from one another. This dramatically reduces the size of the model when compared to the DOM-based model, since it avoids much of the unnecessary duplication inherent to these models. Our initial evaluations have shown that most modern complex RIAs have many of these components, making this model highly applicable. We will in particular work on formally defining this new model and its properties. We will also focus on automatic component detection and efficient modelling algorithms.***Our second axis is automatic user-session reconstructions based on execution logs. This provides the ability to recover the actions of user's offline using common log files. This presents several benefits, including the production of better models (input values, possible sequences of actions etc.), the automatic production of necessary information for further automation (e.g. the ability to infer complete login sequences for automatic testing) and automatic reproduction of faults for debugging purposes.***Our last research axis is to use these models in the context of formal Model-Based Testing. We are particularly interested in the generation of checking sequences in this context (a sequence that proves the conformance of the implementation to our model, under a given fault model). ***The results of this research will be of interest to researchers and practitioners alike. It will allow us to expend on an already successful research program, giving us the opportunity to work on topics of general interest in this domain while continuing our shorter-term work with IBM in parallel. Canada is a research leader in the domain of RIAs, and this research program will strengthen that position.**