Scalability issues with using FSMWeb to test web applications

  • Authors:

  • Anneliese A. Andrews;Jeff Offutt;Curtis Dyreson;Christopher J. Mallery;Kshamta Jerath;Roger Alexander

  • Affiliations:

  • Professor and Associate Dean, University of Denver, 360 S. Gaylord Street, JGH 116, Denver, CO 80208, USA;Software Engineering, Volgenau School of Information Technology and Engineering, George Mason University, Fairfax, VA 22030, USA;School of EE and CS, Washington State University, Pullman, WA 99164, USA;School of EE and CS, Washington State University, Pullman, WA 99164, USA;School of EE and CS, Washington State University, Pullman, WA 99164, USA;Schweitzer Engineering Laboratories, Inc. Pullman, Washington 99163, USA

  • Venue:
  • Information and Software Technology
  • Year:
  • 2010

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Abstract

Web applications are fast becoming more widespread, larger, more interactive, and more essential to the international use of computers. It is well understood that web applications must be highly dependable, and as a field we are just now beginning to understand how to model and test Web applications. One straightforward technique is to model Web applications as finite state machines. However, large numbers of input fields, input choices and the ability to enter values in any order combine to create a state space explosion problem. This paper evaluates a solution that uses constraints on the inputs to reduce the number of transitions, thus compressing the FSM. The paper presents an analysis of the potential savings of the compression technique and reports actual savings from two case studies.