Trends in Model-based GUI Testing

Abstract

This chapter gives an overview of the recent advances in GUI testing. Considering the increasing popularity and fast software development cycles (e.g., desktop and mobile applications), GUI testing gains more importance as it allows us to verify the behavior of a system from the user's perspective. Thus, it can quickly uncover relevant bugs, which a user could face.Traditional capture-replay GUI testing approaches do not meet the demands of developers anymore. Therefore, there is an increasing research activity in modelbased GUI testing, where the user interaction behavior is simulated using a graphbased model. In the following, we outline different graphical notations to describe feasible user interactions, and methods to generate and execute test cases from these models. We discuss the benefits and limitations of the state-of-the-art in GUI testing research and give a brief outlook about new trends and possibilities to improve the GUI testing automation.

Pattern‐based GUI testing: Bridging the gap between design and quality assurance

“…This approach is supported by a set of tools that provide the capability to record user actions, such as mouse motions, mouse clicks, and keyboard inputs, in test scripts, while interacting with the GUI. Based on the test scripts, the user actions can later be replayed, when required, with the goal to verify if the reaction of the system matches the expected result . The test scripts are specified in a particular scripting language provided by the CR tools.…”

GUICop: Approach and toolset for specification‐based GUI testing

“…Researchers have also devised model‐based GUI testing approaches, which are closely related to specification‐based testing. That is, they generated test cases out of models that characterize GUI programmes , or they used these models as oracles . The models were extracted from the programmes via reverse engineering and were built manually using specification languages (eg, VDM , Spec#, and PARADIGM ).…”

“…It could be argued that the functionality provided by GUICop does overlap with established existing approaches: (1) GUI Ripping and HP WinRunner , due to its Driver; (2) GUI Modelling , due to its specification language; and (3) Sikuli , due to its verification capabilities. However, the main advantage of GUICop over the aforementioned approaches is its role as an accurate GUI oracle that is oblivious to GUI complicating factors such as changes in screen resolution or colour scheme.…”

Combining profiling and monitoring to analyze test coverage and identify performance problems

“…While conventional capture and replay (C&R) testing also focuses on monitoring user actions [7,2], the intention is different. In C&R the user actions are recorded for later replay only.…”