A practical approach to testing GUI systems

  • Authors:

  • Ping Li;Toan Huynh;Marek Reformat;James Miller

  • Affiliations:

  • Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Electrical and Computer Engineering Research Facility, University of Alberta, Edmonton, Canada T6G 2V4;Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Electrical and Computer Engineering Research Facility, University of Alberta, Edmonton, Canada T6G 2V4;Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Electrical and Computer Engineering Research Facility, University of Alberta, Edmonton, Canada T6G 2V4;Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Electrical and Computer Engineering Research Facility, University of Alberta, Edmonton, Canada T6G 2V4

  • Venue:
  • Empirical Software Engineering
  • Year:
  • 2007

Quantified Score

Hi-index 0.00

Visualization

Abstract

GUI systems are becoming increasingly popular thanks to their ease of use when compared against traditional systems. However, GUI systems are often challenging to test due to their complexity and special features. Traditional testing methodologies are not designed to deal with the complexity of GUI systems; using these methodologies can result in increased time and expense. In our proposed strategy, a GUI system will be divided into two abstract tiers--the component tier and the system tier. On the component tier, a flow graph will be created for each GUI component. Each flow graph represents a set of relationships between the pre-conditions, event sequences and post-conditions for the corresponding component. On the system tier, the components are integrated to build up a viewpoint of the entire system. Tests on the system tier will interrogate the interactions between the components. This method for GUI testing is simple and practical; we will show the effectiveness of this approach by performing two empirical experiments and describing the results found.