Rapid "crash testing" for continuously evolving GUI-based software applications

TitleRapid "crash testing" for continuously evolving GUI-based software applications
Publication TypeConference Papers
Year of Publication2005
AuthorsXie Q, Memon AM
Conference NameSoftware Maintenance, 2005. ICSM'05. Proceedings of the 21st IEEE International Conference on
Date Published2005/09//
Keywordscrash testing, graphical user interface software retesting, Graphical user interfaces, GUI-based software application, immediate feedback, program testing, rapid-feedback-based quality assurance, software evolution, Software maintenance, software prototyping, Software quality
Abstract

Several rapid-feedback-based quality assurance mechanisms are used to manage the quality of continuously evolving software. Even though graphical user interfaces (GUIs) are one of the most important parts of software, there are currently no mechanisms to quickly retest evolving GUI software. We leverage our previous work on GUI testing to define a new automatic GUI re-testing process called "crash testing" that is integrated with GUI evolution. We describe two levels of crash testing: (1) immediate feedback-based in which a developer indicates that a GUI bug was fixed in response to a previously reported crash; only select crash test cases are rerun and the developer is notified of the results in a matter of seconds, and (2) between code changes in which new crash test cases are generated on-the-fly and executed on the GUI. Since the code may be changed by another developer before all the crash tests have been executed, hence requiring restarting of the process, we use a simple rotation-based scheme to ensure that all crash tests are executed over a series of code changes. We show, via empirical studies, that our crash tests are effective at revealing serious problems in the GUI.

DOI10.1109/ICSM.2005.72