Seminars

Context Matters: GUI Interaction Testing and Beyond

Tuesday, May 8, 2012

Dr. Myra Cohen

Abstract

Automating system testing for programs with graphical user interfaces (GUIs) presents many challenges for the tester. There are an enormous and potentially unbounded number of ways to interact with the software under test and specifications are often limited. Yet test generation techniques need to adequately cover this space. In this talk we present some recent work on a family of model-based GUI coverage criteria grounded in combinatorial interaction testing that considers context in terms of event combinations, sequence length, and absolute positions. We present an overview of some challenges and potential solutions for achieving this coverage in practice, and show the results of some studies exploring the difference in their effectiveness and cost. We end with a discussion of a potential new use for information that is learned during context-based test generation.

Speaker Biography

Myra Cohen is an Associate Professor in the Department of Computer Science and Engineering at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln where she is a member of the Laboratory for Empirically based Software Quality Research and Development (ESQuaReD). She received her Ph.D. from the University of Auckland, New Zealand, and is a recipient of a National Science Foundation early CAREER development award and an Air Force Office of Scientific Research young investigator program award. Her research interests are in testing highly configurable software, GUI testing, applications of combinatorial designs, and search based software engineering.