A framework for web applications testing through objectoriented approach and XUnit tools

Nowadays Web applications quality, reliability and dependability are important factors because software glitches could block entire businesses and cause major embarrassment. Web applications are complex and heterogeneous software, based on several components, often written in many different languages and potentially distributed over the Web. Thus, testing Web applications may be a complex task. This paper presents the OO-based framework used in our WAAT project (Web Applications Analysis and Testing) to test traditional Web applications composed of Web documents, objects and server components (e.g., applications written in HTML, Javascript, PHP4/5, etc.). Our Web testing model named OTMW (OO Testing Model of WAAT project) is inspired by the conventional category partition testing method applied to Web software through the use of a reverse engineered OO model used to describe the architecture of existing applications. OTMW tests Web software using three different layers of test: unit, integration and system testing. This paper describes the set of techniques used by OTMW in every testing layer. To achieve this result this paper describes the OO model used (based on UML class and state diagrams) and it defines the reverse engineering techniques used to analyze software and to describe them through the model. Moreover, the paper proposes a method to identify software units and sequences of units to test applications components and their interactions. Furthermore, it describes an approach to define test cases using the reverse engineered models with a technique based on the subdivision of input data in classes of equivalence. Finally, this paper presents tools used to perform some empirical experiments to evaluate the power, effectiveness and flexibility of the OTMW approach.