Testing Processes of Web Applications Susan Cohen

Agenda  Brief introduction  Web Application Testing Aspects of Web application testing Architectural styles Levels of testing  An approach to integration testing Capture/replay Implicit/explicit states Test case generation

Introduction  Web applications could benefit from formalized processes, better techniques, and defined methodologies  Process model for development of Web applications  UML model of Web applications

Web Application Testing  Thin Web Client  Thick Web Client  Web Delivery Thin Web Client: Web applications, Http protocol for message exchange Thick Web ClientWeb Delivery: Traditional Client/Server, Own communication protocol

Non-functional requirements  Response time  Load testing  Computation resources Client server

Functional Requirements – Application as black box  Partition legal inputs into equivalence classes  Define one or more test cases for each of these classes  Use test cases and inputs to generate output pages Deviations considered errors

Functional Requirements: Application as white-box  HTML pages and messages exchanged via HTTP are known and drive the definition of test cases Example: Link validation  Exploit knowledge of systems organization Server programs, dynamic pages, forms, links, etc

Levels of Testing  Unit Test  Integration Test  System Test  Acceptance Test  Regression Test Integration and regression test dependent on type of web application

Capture/Recapture of graphical events versus HTTP messages

Approaching Integration Testing of Web Applications  Starting point: UML model for the Web application Implicit and Explicit state models  Operations cannot be fully automated and user intervention is unavoidable White box testing criteria  Page testing  Hyperlink testing  Definition use testing  All-uses testing  All paths testing Disregard testing static pages with no forms

Test Case Generation  Satisfying white box criteria means selecting a set of paths in the Web application graph Provides input values  Explicit state model path selection is independent from input values Can automate path and variable selection  Lots more info, but no more time See article for further details

Conclusions  Much of the Web application testing process cannot be automated and requires user intervention  Much work is still needed in Web application testing tools and techniques

Questions: