Modeling, testing, and regression testing of web applications. (c2006)

Abstract

Web Applications became at the heart of the business world. All corporate companies and big institutions have very busy e-commerce web sites that host a major part of their businesses. With this great emerge of web applications, techniques for maintaining their high quality attributes should be developed and exercised. Moreover, the quick evolution of web technology and the high user demands made the web applications subject to rapid maintenance and change which requires the development of efficient regression testing techniques. I researched lots of work done in the field of web application testing and regression testing and I found that each of those papers dealt with a specific part of the web application. While some papers model and test the server side programs of the application, others model and analyze the navigation between pages as seen by the user and yet others dealt with analyzing the architectural environment of the web application. Motivated by the fact that there is no single model to represent the entire web applications and to model it from different perspectives at the same time, I decided to propose a single analysis model which models the three poles of the web application: the client side pages navigated by the user, the server side programs executed at runtime, and the architectural environment hosting the application. Based on this model I am going to propose testing and regression testing techniques for each of the three parts of the model. Having discovered, as well, that there is no automated black box regression testing technique, I am going to propose a methodology and algorithm to create a tool capable of applying black box regression testing automatically.