Anna Rita Fasolino

Using GUI ripping for automated testing of Android applications

We present AndroidRipper, an automated technique that tests Android apps via their Graphical User Interface (GUI). AndroidRipper is based on a user-interface driven ripper that automatically explores the apps GUI with the aim of exercising the application in a structured manner. We evaluate AndroidRipper on an open-source Android app. Our results show that our GUI-based test cases are able to detect severe, previously unknown, faults in the underlying code, and the structured exploration outperforms a random approach.

Testing Web applications

The rapid diffusion of Internet and open standard technologies is producing a significant growth of the demand of Web sites and Web applications with more and more strict requirements of usability, reliability, interoperability and security. While several methodological and technological proposals for developing Web applications are coining both from industry and academia, there is a general lack of methods and tools to carry out the key processes that significantly impact the quality of a Web application (WA), such as the validation & verification (V&V), and quality assurance. Some open issues in the field of Web application testing are addressed in this paper. The paper exploits an object-oriented model of a WA as a test model, and proposes a definition of the unit level for testing the WA. Based on this model, a method to test the single units of a WA and for the integration testing is proposed. Moreover, in order to experiment with the proposed technique and strategy, an integrated platform of tools comprising a Web application analyzer, a repository, a test case generator and a test case executor, has been developed and is presented in the paper. A case study, carried out with the aim of assessing the effectiveness of the proposed method and tools, produced interesting and encouraging results.

A GUI Crawling-Based Technique for Android Mobile Application Testing

As mobile applications become more complex, specific development tools and frameworks as well as cost effective testing techniques and tools will be essential to assure the development of secure, high-quality mobile applications. This paper addresses the problem of automatic testing of mobile applications developed for the Google Android platform, and presents a technique for rapid crash testing and regression testing of Android applications. The technique is based on a crawler that automatically builds a model of the application GUI and obtains test cases that can be automatically executed. The technique is supported by a tool for both crawling the application and generating the test cases. In the paper we present an example of using the technique and the tool for testing a real small size Android application that preliminary shows the effectiveness and usability of the proposed testing approach.

Understanding function behaviors through program slicing

We present conditioned slicing as a general slicing framework for program comprehension. A conditioned slice consists of a subset of program statements which preserves the behavior of the original program with respect to a set of program executions. The set of initial states of the program that characterize these executions is specified in terms of a first order logic formula on the input variables of the program. Conditioned slicing allows a better decomposition of the program giving the maintainer the possibility to analyze code fragments with respect to different perspectives. We also show how slices produced with traditional slicing methods can be reduced to conditioned slices. Conditioned slices can be identified by using symbolic execution techniques and dependence graphs.

Testing Web-based applications: The state of the art and future trends

Software testing is a difficult task and testing Web-based applications may be even more difficult, due to the peculiarities of such applications. In the last years, several problems in the field of Web-based applications testing have been addressed by research work, and several methods and techniques have been defined and used to test Web-based applications effectively. This paper will present the main differences between Web-based applications and traditional ones, how these differences impact the testing of the former ones, and some relevant contributions in the field of Web application testing developed in recent years. The focus is mainly on testing the functionality of a Web-based application, even if some discussion about the testing of non-functional requirements is provided too. Some indications about future trends in Web application testing are also outlined in the paper.

An approach to identify duplicated web pages

A relevant consequence of the expansion of the web and e-commerce is the growth of the demand of new web sites and web applications. As a result, web sites and applications are usually developed without a formalized process, and web pages are directly coded in an incremental way, where new pages are obtained by duplicating existing ones. Duplicated web pages, having the same structure and just differing for the data they include, can be considered as clones. The identification of clones may reduce the effort devoted to test, maintain and evolve web sites and applications. Moreover, clone detection among different web sites aims to detect cases of possible plagiarism. In this paper we propose an approach. based on similarity metrics, to detect duplicated pages in web sites and applications, implemented with HTML language and ASP technology. The proposed approach has been assessed by analyzing several web sites and Web applications. The obtained results are reported in the paper with respect to some case studies.

A wrapping approach for migrating legacy system interactive functionalities to Service Oriented Architectures

Software systems modernisation using Service Oriented Architectures (SOAs) and Web Services represents a valuable option for extending the lifetime of mission-critical legacy systems. This paper presents a black-box modernisation approach for exposing interactive functionalities of legacy systems as Services. The problem of transforming the original user interface of the system into the request/response interface of a SOA is solved by a wrapper that is able to interact with the system on behalf of the user. The wrapper behaviour is defined in the form of Finite State Machines retrievable by black-box reverse engineering of the human-computer interface. The paper describes our wrapper-based migration process and discusses the results of case studies showing process effectiveness and quality of resulting services.

Reverse engineering web applications: the WARE approach

The rapid, progressive diffusion of Web applications in several productive contexts of our modern society is laying the foundations of a renewed scenario of software development, where one of the emerging problems is that of defining and validating cost-effective approaches for maintaining and evolving these software systems.Due to several factors, the solution to this problem is not straightforward. The heterogeneous and dynamic nature of components making up a Web application, the lack of effective programming mechanisms for implementing basic software engineering principles in it, and undisciplined development processes induced by the high pressure of a very short time-to-market, make Web application maintenance a challenging problem. A relevant issue consists of reusing the methodological and technological experience in the sector of traditional software maintenance, and exploring the opportunity of using reverse engineering to support effective Web application maintenance.This paper presents an approach for defining reverse engineering processes involving Web applications. The approach has been used to implement a process, including reverse engineering methods and a supporting software tool, that helps to understand existing undocumented Web applications to be maintained or evolved, through the reconstruction of UML diagrams. The proposed reverse engineering process has been submitted to a validation experiment, the results of which showed the usability of the process for reverse engineering Web applications with different characteristics, and highlighted possible areas for improvement of its effectiveness. The experiment and the lessons learned from it are presented in the paper.

WARE: a tool for the reverse engineering of Web applications

The development of Web sites and applications is increasing dramatically to satisfy the market requests. The software industry is facing the new demand under the pressure of a very short time-to-market and an extremely high competition. As a result, Web sites and applications are usually developed without a disciplined process: Web applications are directly coded and no, or poor, documentation is produced to support the subsequent maintenance and evolution activities, thus compromising the quality of the applications. This paper presents a tool for reverse engineering Web applications. UML diagrams are used to model a set of views that depict several aspects of a Web application at different abstraction levels. The recovered diagrams ease the comprehension of the application and support its maintenance and evolution. A case study, carried out with the aim of assessing the effectiveness of the proposed tool, allowed relevant information about some real Web applications to be successfully recovered and modeled by UML diagrams.

Migrating legacy systems towards object-oriented platforms

Presents an approach to migrate legacy systems to object-oriented platforms. The process consists of six sequential phases and encompasses reverse engineering and re-engineering activities. The aim of the reverse engineering phases is to decompose programs into components implementing user interface management and components implementing application domain objects. The identification of objects is centred around a persistent data store and exploits object-oriented design metrics. Wrapping techniques are the core of the re-engineering activities. They make new systems able to exploit existing resources, thus allowing an incremental and selective translation of the identified objects