Web Application Testing Challenges Blaine Donley and Jeff Offutt Software Engineering George Mason University
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[email protected] September, 2009 Abstract A website is a static collection of HTML files that are linked together through tags on the World Wide Web. A web application, however, is an arbitrarily complex program that happens to be deployed on the World Wide Web. Web applications use new technologies that change on a regular basis, are almost always distributed, often employ concurrency, are inherently component-based, usually built with diverse languages, and use control and state behaviors that are not available to traditional software. This paper explores the technological-based differences between web software applications and traditional applications, with a specific emphasis on how these differences affect testing. Both applied and research issues are considered. 1 Introduction Since the inception of the Internet, the complexity of hypertext-based web applications has dramatically increased. These complexities are masked by a seemingly simplistic client-server model based on standardized languages and protocols. The language and protocol “standards” are interpreted in various ways by a myriad of diverse browsers, languages, and frameworks. These languages and frameworks provide web developers with toolsets to create highly complex functionality and stateful behavior. The client-server model and stateless transportation protocol used by Web applications create a disconnect that introduces additional complexities. Web applications have adopted unique control flow and state management techniques to get around the stateless nature of HTTP. The client-server model used by web application is quite different from other client-server models. A major difference is that the client interface is generated by the server at run-time.