Program analysis to support quality assurance techniques for web applications

• Main Author: Halfond, William G. J.
• Published: Georgia Institute of Technology 2010
• Subjects: Software engineering; Program analysis; Web applications; Web sites; HTTP (Computer network protocol); Quality assurance; Computer programs Testing
• Online Access: http://hdl.handle.net/1853/33930

As web applications occupy an increasingly important role in the day-to-day lives of millions of people, testing and analysis techniques that ensure that these applications function with a high level of quality are becoming even more essential. However, many software quality assurance techniques are not directly applicable to modern web applications. Certain characteristics, such as the use of HTTP and generated object programs, can make it difficult to identify software abstractions used by traditional quality assurance techniques. More generally, many of these abstractions are implemented differently in web applications, and the lack of techniques to identify them complicates the application of existing quality assurance techniques to web applications. This dissertation describes the development of program analysis techniques for modern web applications and shows that these techniques can be used to improve quality assurance. The first part of the research focuses on the development of a suite of program analysis techniques that identifies useful abstractions in web applications. The second part of the research evaluates whether these program analysis techniques can be used to successfully adapt traditional quality assurance techniques to web applications, improve existing web application quality assurance techniques, and develop new techniques focused on web application-specific issues. The work in quality assurance techniques focuses on improving three different areas: generating test inputs, verifying interface invocations, and detecting vulnerabilities. The evaluations of the resulting techniques show that the use of the program analyses results in significant improvements in existing quality assurance techniques and facilitates the development of new useful techniques.