Challenges with modern web testing

• Main Author: Suwala, Pawel
• Format: Others
• Language: English
• Published: Linköpings universitet, Institutionen för datavetenskap 2015
• Subjects: software engineering; web testing; testing; test automation; quality assurance; Software Engineering; Programvaruteknik
• Online Access: http://urn.kb.se/resolve?urn=urn:nbn:se:liu:diva-118268

The number of web applications continues to grow rapidly. Many applications that were traditionally desktop-based such as word processors, email clients or even file managers have now their web alternatives that often have bigger user base. While the software world is shifting from providing desktop-based applications to offering cloud-based services, challenges arise to provide high quality software in this radically different environment. Web-based applications are different in many aspects to their desktop equivalents. Web-based and desktop-based applications have radically dissimilar architecture, user interface, execution environment, requirements and limitations. To mention a few specific differences: the web application is executed in the context of a web browser, not operating system; code is executed in two separate places: on the server and in the web browser; code for the server is written in a different language than code for the client. Because of these differences, the traditional software testing techniques are only of limited use. To properly test a web application one needs to take into account numerous differences in Web-Browsers such as Internet Explorer, Mozilla Firefox, Google Chrome or Apple Safari. Simple input-output testing is useful only to limited degree, because output cannot be just compared to the predefined value but must be compared within the context of all the environments and operating systems the application supports. The fact that an application works in one browser does not guarantee that it will work at all in other browsers. The entire complexity of the problem makes testing web applications a very time consuming and difficult task. Often it takes significantly longer time to test the application than it is to implement it. Because of these difficulties, web applications are often tested exclusively manually by humans, and only to a limited degree. New techniques and technologies are necessary to approach the problem of web application testing. This paper includes a case study carried out during author’s work on a web-based application. It examines the current state-of-the-art of web application testing and suggests useful techniques in tackling the problem.