A practical approach to testing GUI systems

GUI systems are becoming increasingly popular thanks to their ease of use when compared against traditional systems. However, GUI systems are often challenging to test due to their complexity and special features. Traditional testing methodologies are not designed to deal with the complexity of GUI systems; using these methodologies can result in increased time and expense. In our proposed strategy, a GUI system will be divided into two abstract tiers—the component tier and the system tier. On the component tier, a flow graph will be created for each GUI component. Each flow graph represents a set of relationships between the pre-conditions, event sequences and post-conditions for the corresponding component. On the system tier, the components are integrated to build up a viewpoint of the entire system. Tests on the system tier will interrogate the interactions between the components. This method for GUI testing is simple and practical; we will show the effectiveness of this approach by performing two empirical experiments and describing the results found.

James MillerEmail:

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Ping Li   received her M.Sc. in Computer Engineering from the University of Alberta, Canada, in 2004. She is currently working for Waterloo Hydrogeologic Inc., a Schlumberger Company, as a Software Quality Analyst. Toan Huynh   received a B.Sc. in Computer Engineering from the University of Alberta, Canada. He is currently a PhD candidate at the same institution. His research interests include: web systems, e-commerce, software testing, vulnerabilities and defect management, and software approaches to the production of secure systems. Marek Reformat   received his M.Sc. degree from Technical University of Poznan, Poland, and his Ph.D. from University of Manitoba, Canada. His interests were related to simulation and modeling in time-domain, as well as evolutionary computing and its application to optimization problems. For three years he worked for the Manitoba HVDC Research Centre, Canada, where he was a member of a simulation software development team. Currently, Marek Reformat is with the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at University of Alberta. His research interests lay in the areas of application of Computational Intelligence techniques, such as neuro-fuzzy systems and evolutionary computing, as well as probabilistic and evidence theories to intelligent data analysis leading to translating data into knowledge. He applies these methods to conduct research in the areas of Software Engineering, Software Quality in particular, and Knowledge Engineering. Dr. Reformat has been a member of program committees of several conferences related to Computational Intelligence and evolutionary computing. He is a member of the IEEE Computer Society and ACM. James Miller   received the B.Sc. and Ph.D. degrees in Computer Science from the University of Strathclyde, Scotland. During this period, he worked on the ESPRIT project GENEDIS on the production of a real-time stereovision system. Subsequently, he worked at the United Kingdom’s National Electronic Research Initiative on Pattern Recognition as a Principal Scientist, before returning to the University of Strathclyde to accept a lectureship, and subsequently a senior lectureship in Computer Science. Initially during this period his research interests were in Computer Vision, and he was a co-investigator on the ESPRIT 2 project VIDIMUS. Since 1993, his research interests have been in Software and Systems Engineering. In 2000, he joined the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at the University of Alberta as a full professor and in 2003 became an adjunct professor at the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at the University of Calgary. He is the principal investigator in a number of research projects that investigate software verification and validation issues across various domains, including embedded, web-based and ubiquitous environments. He has published over one hundred refereed journal and conference papers on Software and Systems Engineering (see www.steam.ualberta.ca for details on recent directions); and currently serves on the program committee for the IEEE International Symposium on Empirical Software Engineering and Measurement; and sits on the editorial board of the Journal of Empirical Software Engineering.