Model-Based Contract Testing of Graphical User Interfaces

Abstract

SUMMARYGraphical User Interfaces (GUIs) are critical for the security, safety and reliability of software systems. Injection attacks, for instance via SQL, succeed due to insufficient input validation and can be avoided if contract-based approaches, such as Design by Contract, are followed in the software development lifecycle of GUIs. This paper proposes a model-based testing approach for detecting GUI data contract violations, which may result in serious failures such as system crash. A contract-based model of GUI data specifications is used to develop test scenarios and to serve as test oracle. The technique introduced uses multi terminal binary decision diagrams, which are designed as an integral part of decision tableaugmented event sequence graphs, to implement a GUI testing process. A case study, which validates the presented approach on a port scanner written in Java programming language, is presented.

Mutation Analysis of Specification-Based Contracts in Software Testing

“…The disadvantage of the DT is that it has fixed size and depending on its size then(v) ≠ else(v) 28 . Each terminal vertex v has a distinct value(v) 28 .…”

“…2) for all vertices v, v' with the same labeling, if the subgraphs with root v and v' respectively are isomorphic (i.e. coincide up to the names of the services) then v = v' 28 . Formally, if var(v) = var(v') and else(v) = else(v') and then(v) = then(v'), then v = v' 28 .…”

“…coincide up to the names of the services) then v = v' 28 . Formally, if var(v) = var(v') and else(v) = else(v') and then(v) = then(v'), then v = v' 28 .…”

Automated generation of oracled test cases with regular expressions and combinatorial techniques

“…Other approaches, such as Tuglular et al, 22 propose a testing technique for GUI, based on models to detect data violations, being also the basis for the development of test oracles. In this approach, the user interface is modeled as an “event sequence graph.” The nodes are annotated using design‐by‐contract, where every contract consists of a set of boolean conditions.…”

Advances in Model-Based Testing of Graphical User Interfaces

“…Following DbC, UML is supplemented with object constraint language (OCL) to provide some formalism. Contracts in decision table format are compact and easy to understand and maintain [56]. However, there is no generally accepted formalism for contract representation.…”