Kevin Michael Conroy

Composing Integrated Systems Using GUI-Based Applications And Web Services

Integrated systems are composed of components that exchange information (i.e., interoperate). These components include graphical user interface (GUI) applications (GAPs) and web services. It is difficult to make GAPs interoperate, especially if they are closed and monolithic. Unlike GAPs, web services are applications that are designed to interoperate over the Internet. We propose a novel generic approach for creating integrated systems by composing GAPs with each other and web services efficiently and non-invasively. This approach combines a nonstandard use of accessibility technologies for accessing and controlling GAPs in a uniform way with a visualization mechanism that enables nonprogrammers to compose integrated systems by performing point-and-click, drag-and-drop operations on GAPs and web services. We built a tool based on our approach, and using this tool we created an integrated application that controls two closed and monolithic commercial GAPs and third-party web services. Our evaluation suggests that our approach is effective, and it can be used to create nontrivial integrated systems by composing GAPs with each other and web services.

Finding Relevant Applications for Prototyping

When gathering requirements for new software projects, it is often cost-effective to find similar applications that can be used as the basis for prototypes rather than building them from scratch. However, finding such sample applications can be difficult, often making prototyping time-consuming and expensive. We offer a novel approach called Exemplar (EXEcutable exaMPLes ARchive) for finding highly relevant software projects from a large archive of executable applications. After a programmer enters a query that contains high-level concepts (e.g., toolbar, download, smart card), Exemplar uses information retrieval and program analysis to retrieve applications that implement these concepts. We hypothesize that Exemplar will be effective and efficient in helping programmers to quickly find highly relevant applications to support prototyping.

Automatic Test Generation From GUI Applications For Testing Web Services

Graphical User Interface (GUI) Applications (GAPs) are ubiquitous and provide various services. Since many GAPs are not designed to exchange information (i.e., intemperate), companies replace legacy GAPs with web services, that are designed to intemperate over the Internet. However, it is laborious and inefficient to create unit test cases to test the web services. We propose a novel approach for generating tests for web services from legacy GAPs. This approach combines accessibility technologies for accessing and controlling GAPs in a uniform way with a visualization mechanism that enables nonprogrammers to generate unit test cases for web services by performing drag-and-drop operations on GUI elements of legacy GAPs. We built a tool based on our approach, and we used this tool to generate unit test cases from different GAPs. We believe that our approach is unique, and our evaluation suggests that our approach is effective and it can be used to generate test cases from nontrivial GAPs.

Creating Web Services From GUI-Based Applications

Graphical user interface (GUI) applications (GAPs) are ubiquitous and provide various services. However, it is difficult to make GAPs exchange information (i.e., interoperate) especially if they are closed and monolithic. Unlike GAPs, Web services are applications that are designed to interoperate over the Internet. Thus a fundamental problem of interoperability is how to reengineer GAPs into Web services efficiently and noninvasively. We propose a novel generic approach for creating Web services from GAPs. This approach combines a nonstandard use of accessibility technologies for accessing and controlling GAPs in a uniform way with a visualization mechanism that enables nonprogrammers to create Web services by performing point-and-click, drag-and-drop operations on GAPs. We built a tool based on our approach and created Web services that control two closed and monolithic commercial GAPs with this tool. Our evaluation suggests that our approach is effective and it can be used to create Web services from nontrivial GAPs.