Information Technology Reference
In-Depth Information
we can go directly into link coverage testing without waiting for the state transitions
to reach this state from an initial state. Fortunately for web testing, most web pages
can be saved or “bookmarked” to enable us to perform such testing easily. For a
subset of dynamic and embedded pages, a more complicated navigation sequence
will probably be needed.
The result checking is easy and straightforward, since the output for each transition
is also specified in FSMs in addition to the next state. The key to this result checking
is to make sure that both the next state and the output are checked.
4 . 3 L i m i t a t i o n s a n d M o t i v a t i o n f o r U s a g e - B a s e d W e b Te s t i n g
We characterized web-based applications in Section
3
by their information/docu-
ment focus, integration between information and navigation, and multi-layered sup-
port infrastructure to derive checklist- and FSM-based testing above for web-based
applications. Additional characteristics of web-based applications include:
Massive user population
: Virtually anyone from anywhere with an Internet ac-
cess can be a user of a given web-site. Although some traditional software
systems, such as operating systems, also serve a massive user population, the
systems are usually accessed locally, thus scattering the user population into
sub-groups of limited size.
Diverse usage environments
: Web users employ different hardware equipments,
network connections, operating systems, middleware and web server support,
and web browsers, as compared to pre-specified platforms for most traditional
software.
Any reliability problem of the web-based applications will be magnified by the
massive user population, requiring us to address reliability problems effectively
and directly. The diverse usage environment requires thorough testing to be per-
formed for a huge number of situations. However, traditional coverage-based testing
adapted for web testing in this section cannot be used directly to ensure reliability
for web-based applications, and the combinatorial explosion resulted from the above
diverse environments would make “coverage” an unattainable goal, as discussed be-
low.
There is one obvious drawback to web testing using techniques covered in this sec-
tion: The number of web pages for even a moderate-sized web site can be thousands
or much more. Consequently, there would be significant numbers of unorganized in-
dividual testing activities when we attempt to test the individual items or aspects,
which would overwhelm testing resources. If FSMs are used, the large number of
states makes any detailed testing impractical, even with some automated support,
