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Research Issues in the Automated Testing of Ajax Applications

  • Conference paper
SOFSEM 2010: Theory and Practice of Computer Science (SOFSEM 2010)

Part of the book series: Lecture Notes in Computer Science ((LNTCS,volume 5901))

Abstract

There is a growing trend to move desktop applications towards the web. This move is made possible through advances in web technologies collectively known as Asynchronous JavaScript and XML (ajax). With ajax, the classical model of browsing a series of pages is replaced by a JavaScript engine (running in the browser) taking control of user interaction, exchanging information updates with the web server instead of requesting the complete next page. The benefits of this move include no installation costs, automated upgrading for all users, increased interactivity, reduced user-perceived latency, and universal access, to name a few. ajax, however, comes at a price: the asynchronous, stateful nature and the use of Javascript make ajax applications particularly error-prone, causing serious dependability threats. In this paper, we evaluate to what extent automated testing can be used to address these ajax dependability problems. Based on an analysis of the current challenges in testing ajax, we formulate directions for future research.

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Delft University of Technology,  

    Arie van Deursen & Ali Mesbah

Authors
  1. Arie van Deursen
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  2. Ali Mesbah
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Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Information and Computing Sciences, Utrecht University, Padualaan 14, 3584 CH, Utrecht, The Netherlands

    Jan van Leeuwen

  2. LaBRI, Universit Bordeaux, 351 cours de la Libration, 1F-33405, Talence Cedex, France

    Anca Muscholl

  3. Department of Computer Science & Applied Mathematics, Weizmann Institute, Faculty of Mathematics and Computer Science, 76100, Rehovot, Israel

    David Peleg

  4. Department of Software Engineering Faculty of Mathematics and Physics Malostranské nám, Charles University, 25 11800, Prague 1, Czech Republic

    Jaroslav Pokorný

  5. Software Engineering, Department of Computer Science, RWTH Aachen University, 3, Ahornstrae 55, D-52074, Aachen, Germany

    Bernhard Rumpe

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van Deursen, A., Mesbah, A. (2010). Research Issues in the Automated Testing of Ajax Applications. In: van Leeuwen, J., Muscholl, A., Peleg, D., Pokorný, J., Rumpe, B. (eds) SOFSEM 2010: Theory and Practice of Computer Science. SOFSEM 2010. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol 5901. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-11266-9_2

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-11266-9_2

  • Publisher Name: Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-642-11265-2

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-642-11266-9

  • eBook Packages: Computer ScienceComputer Science (R0)

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