An automated process for generating test inputs for web services from a WSDL is presented. A grammatical representation of the web service is extracted from the WSDL and used to produce test cases. A context-free grammar (CFG) is generated from the XSD that is stored in the WSDL. The CFG is provided as input into a constraint-satisfaction problem solver to automatically generate a diverse set of structurally correct XML documents. Testing data is then inserted into the XML templates in accordance with any constraints specified in the XSD. Web service-specific testing can be performed with the inclusion of external datasets and service-specific configurations.

Cookies are used by over 80% of Web applications utilizing dynamic Web application frameworks. Applications deploying cookies must be rigorously verified to ensure that the application is robust and secure. Given the intense time-to-market pressures faced by modern Web applications, testing strategies that are low cost and automatable are required. Automated Cookie Collection Testing (CCT) is presented, and is empirically demonstrated to be a low-cost and highly effective automated testing solution for modern Web applications. Automatable test oracles and evaluation metrics specifically designed for Web applications are presented, and are shown to be significant diagnostic tests. Automated CCT is shown to detect faults within five real-world Web applications. A case study of over 580 test results for a single application is presented demonstrating that automated CCT is an effective testing strategy. Moreover, CCT is found to detect security bugs in a Web application released into full production.

Although Random Testing (RT) is low cost and straightforward, its effectiveness is not satisfactory. To increase the effectiveness of RT, researchers have developed Adaptive Random Testing (ART) and Quasi-Random Testing (QRT) methods which attempt to maximize the test case coverage of the input domain. This paper proposes the use of Centroidal Voronoi Tessellations (CVT) to address this problem. Accordingly, a test case generation method, namely, Random Border CVT (RBCVT), is proposed which can enhance the previous RT methods to improve their coverage of the input space. The generated test cases by the other methods act as the input to the RBCVT algorithm and the output is an improved set of test cases. Therefore, RBCVT is not an independent method and is considered as an add-on to the previous methods. An extensive simulation study and a mutant-based software testing investigation have been performed to demonstrate the effectiveness of RBCVT against the ART and QRT methods. Results from the experimental frameworks demonstrate that RBCVT outperforms previous methods. In addition, a novel search algorithm has been incorporated into RBCVT reducing the order of computational complexity of the new approach. To further analyze the RBCVT method, randomness analysis was undertaken demonstrating that RBCVT has the same characteristics as ART methods in this regard.

Random testing is a low cost strategy that can be applied to a wide range of testing problems. While the cost and straightforward application of random testing are appealing, these benefits must be evaluated against the reduced effectiveness due to the generality of the approach. Recently, a number of novel techniques, coined Adaptive Random Testing, have sought to increase the effectiveness of random testing by attempting to maximize the testing coverage of the input domain. This paper presents the novel application of an evolutionary search algorithm to this problem. The results of an extensive simulation study are presented in which the evolutionary approach is compared against the Fixed Size Candidate Set (FSCS), Restricted Random Testing (RRT), quasi-random testing using the Sobol sequence (Sobol), and random testing (RT) methods. The evolutionary approach was found to be superior to FSCS, RRT, Sobol, and RT amongst block patterns, the arena in which FSCS, and RRT have demonstrated the most appreciable gains in testing effectiveness. The results among fault patterns with increased complexity were shown to be similar to those of FSCS, and RRT; and showed a modest improvement over Sobol, and RT. A comparison of the asymptotic and empirical runtimes of the evolutionary search algorithm, and the other testing approaches, was also considered, providing further evidence that the application of an evolutionary search algorithm is feasible, and within the same order of time complexity as the other adaptive random testing approaches.

The results of an extensive investigation of cookie deployment amongst 100,000 Internet sites are presented. Cookie deployment is found to be approaching universal levels and hence there exists an associated need for relevant Web and software engineering processes, specifically testing strategies which actively consider cookies. The semi-automated investigation demonstrates that over two-thirds of the sites studied deploy cookies. The investigation specifically examines the use of first-party, third-party, sessional, and persistent cookies within Web-based applications, identifying the presence of a P3P policy and dynamic Web technologies as major predictors of cookie usage. The results are juxtaposed with the lack of testing strategies present in the literature. A number of real-world examples, including two case studies are presented, further accentuating the need for comprehensive testing strategies for Web-based applications. The use of antirandom test case generation is explored with respect to the testing issues discussed. Finally, a number of seeding vectors are presented, providing a basis for testing cookies within Web-based applications.

Cookies, the HTTP state management mechanism, are the backbone of many web applications. Despite a high adoption rate, cookies have remained virtually unexplored by the academic community. This paper presents an EBNF grammatical definition and a three- tiered testing strategy for cookies. The testing strategy builds upon anti-random and grammar-based methodologies examining cookies from three perspectives: cookies collections, individual cookie transformations and application-specific test-case generation. The collection of cookies maintained within a user-agent are explored in light of the anti-random test- suite reduction techniques and the grammatical definition of a cookie, culminating in the definition of a number of seeding test-vectors providing the basis for a scalable test-suite. A number of distinct grammatically correct cookie transformations are presented, providing further scalability to the proposed testing strategy. Finally a discussion of application-specific cookie transformations is presented, with focus upon the security and reliability concerns of modern web applications.