Model-Based Testing for Composite Web Services in Cloud Brokerage Scenarios

Cloud brokerage is an enabling technology allowing various services to be merged together for providing optimum quality of service for the end-users. Within this collection of composed services, testing is a challenging task which brokers have to take on to ensure quality of service. Most Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) testing has focused on high-level test generation from the functional specification of individual services, with little research into how to achieve sufficient test coverage of composite services. This paper explores the use of model-based testing to achieve testing of composite services, when two individual web services are tested and combined. Two example web services – a login service and a simple shopping service – are combined to give a more realistic shopping cart service. This paper focuses on the test coverage required for testing the component services individually and their composition. The paper highlights the problems of service composition testing, requiring a reworking of the combined specification and regeneration of the tests, rather than a simple composition of the test suites; and concludes by arguing that more work needs to be done in this area

A meta-model for automatic modeling dynamic web applications

This paper proposes an approach to automatically transform source code of a web application into an abstraction model. A Web Application Program Dependency (WAPD) meta-model is being proposed to store dependency information based on a multi-tiered architecture, corresponding to web application’s behavior. A WebParseTree is used as an intermediate model for the transformation from the source code to the WAPD model. The WebParseTree is a DOM-like tree that consists of statements and dependencies stored information and behavior in the tree. To ensure that the resulting model is valid, it must conform to the defined web application rules. This validation step can be done automatically by a constraint validator using Object Constraint Language (OCL). The WAPD model will be represented as a generic model for web applications which can be used for many purposes such as automatic test case generation and automatic code transformation

Model-based Testing in Cloud Brokerage Scenarios

In future Cloud ecosystems, brokers will mediate between service providers and consumers, playing an increased role in quality assurance, checking services for functional compliance to agreed standards, among other aspects. To date, most Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) testing has been performed manually, requiring duplicated effort at the development, certification and deployment stages of the service lifecycle. This paper presents a strategy for achieving automated testing for certification and re-certification of SaaS applications, based on the adoption of simple state-based and functional specifications. High-level test suites are generated from specifications, by algorithms that provide the necessary and sufficient coverage. The high-level tests must be grounded for each implementation technology, whether SOAP, REST or rich-client. Two examples of grounding are presented, one into SOAP for a traditional web service and the other into Selenium for a SAP HANA rich-client application. The results demonstrate good test coverage. Further work is required to fully automate the grounding

A Mapping Study of scientific merit of papers, which subject are web applications test techniques, considering their validity threats

Progress in software engineering requires (1) more empirical studies of quality, (2) increased focus on synthesizing evidence, (3) more theories to be built and tested, and (4) the validity of the experiment is directly related with the level of confidence in the process of experimental investigation. This paper presents the results of a qualitative and quantitative classification of the threats to the validity of software engineering experiments comprising a total of 92 articles published in the period 2001-2015, dealing with software testing of Web applications. Our results show that 29.4% of the analyzed articles do not mention any threats to validity, 44.2% do it briefly, and 14% do it judiciously; that leaves a question: these studies have scientific value

LLM for Test Script Generation and Migration: Challenges, Capabilities, and Opportunities

This paper investigates the application of large language models (LLM) in the domain of mobile application test script generation. Test script generation is a vital component of software testing, enabling efficient and reliable automation of repetitive test tasks. However, existing generation approaches often encounter limitations, such as difficulties in accurately capturing and reproducing test scripts across diverse devices, platforms, and applications. These challenges arise due to differences in screen sizes, input modalities, platform behaviors, API inconsistencies, and application architectures. Overcoming these limitations is crucial for achieving robust and comprehensive test automation. By leveraging the capabilities of LLMs, we aim to address these challenges and explore its potential as a versatile tool for test automation. We investigate how well LLMs can adapt to diverse devices and systems while accurately capturing and generating test scripts. Additionally, we evaluate its cross-platform generation capabilities by assessing its ability to handle operating system variations and platform-specific behaviors. Furthermore, we explore the application of LLMs in cross-app migration, where it generates test scripts across different applications and software environments based on existing scripts. Throughout the investigation, we analyze its adaptability to various user interfaces, app architectures, and interaction patterns, ensuring accurate script generation and compatibility. The findings of this research contribute to the understanding of LLMs' capabilities in test automation. Ultimately, this research aims to enhance software testing practices, empowering app developers to achieve higher levels of software quality and development efficiency.Comment: Accepted by the 23rd IEEE International Conference on Software Quality, Reliability, and Security (QRS 2023

Balanced Abstract Web-MVC Style: An Abstract MVC Implementation for Web-based Applications

The features and the capabilities of web applicationsare growing rapidly, and the complexities and difficulties ofweb applications engineering are also growing in parallel. Ifthe architectural formalism of these advanced web applicationsis well realized, the complexities could be understood, thus thedifficulties could be reduced. Model-View-Controller (MVC)has been recognized as a well-formed architectural style, andhas been widely used in web applications engineering invarious forms of implementations. These MVCimplementations are heavily dependent on specific set oftechnologies and/or some other facts; hence, they do notprovide an abstract realization to be used in a wider range ofweb application engineering. We propose an implementation ofMVC in more abstract form, which – we think – will increasethe realization of the advanced web applications, thus lower theengineering complexities and difficulties of web applications.We believe that this implementation is more applicable in awider range of environments and technologies, and will upturnthe architectural properties like performance andmodifiability. Based on this implementation we introduce anMVC based architectural style for web applications. In future,we expect to improve this further towards supporting RichInternet Applications

Murphy tools: Utilizing extracted gui models for industrial software testing

Abstract-One of the main challenges in adopting modelbased testing (MBT) is the effort and expertise required to produce the formal models. For an existing system, there are various approaches to automate the process of creating the models. In this paper, we share our experiences from a long term industrial evaluation on automatically extracting models of graphical user interface (GUI) applications and utilizing the extracted models to automate and support GUI testing. While model extraction and GUI testing has been recently a popular research topic, most proposed approaches have limitations on what can be modeled and industry adoption has been lacking. We describe the process of using Murphy tools to extract GUI models and utilize these models to automate and support various testing activities. During the evaluation, test engineers of an industrial software company used Murphy tools to support their daily efforts in testing commercial software products during 1 year time period. The results from the evaluation were promising, significantly reducing time and effort required for GUI testing

Hidden-web induced by client-side scripting: An empirical study

Abstract. Client-side JavaScript is increasingly used for enhancing web application functionality, interactivity, and responsiveness. Through the execution of JavaScript code in browsers, the DOM tree representing a webpage at runtime, can be incrementally updated without requiring a URL change. This dynamically updated content is hidden from general search engines. In this paper, we present the first empirical study on measuring and characterizing the hidden-web induced as a result of clientside JavaScript execution. Our study reveals that this type of hidden-web content is prevalent in online web applications today: from the 500 websites we analyzed, 95% contain client-side hidden-web content; On those websites that contain client-side hidden-web content, (1) on average, 62% of the web states are hidden, (2) per hidden state, there is an average of 19 kilobytes of data that is hidden from which 0.6 kilobytes contain textual content, (3) the DIV element is the most common clickable element used (61%) to initiate this type of hidden-web state transition, and (4) on average 25 minutes is required to dynamically crawl 50 DOM states. Further, our study indicates that there is a correlation between DOM tree size and hidden-web content, but no correlation exists between the amount of JavaScript code and client-side hidden-web