Joshua Penick
Jimmy Ho
Reference Information
Jalal Mahmud and Tessa Lau, IBM, IUI 2010, February 7 - 10, 2010, Hong Kong, China.
Summary
In this paper the authors explain their way of going about creating an easy to use system that will be used to test web applications. Normally a scripting language would be used in order to test out different features repeatedly. However, these scripting languages are usually complicated and hard to use for the layman. The system that they have created is much more intuitive and does not require programming experience to use it. The 'CoTester' learns what the user wants to test and can write the code from that representation. The algorithm can take in many different plain text type actions and translate them to run the scripts. The article also talks about how the subroutines that are created can be segmented out.
Discussion
This type of program is actually incredibly helpful for the developer as the project progresses. If the web application is being made in a company, developers can push of these annoying tests to non-programming type people. The tests could be made in large numbers very quickly so development could speed up greatly. This program could also be tweaked to help in other areas. People could use it to perform a lot of basic functions when they open their web browser. It could also be used maliciously as it could be used to skew results on web applications that are trying to mine data since you could make the 'CoTester' repeatedly enter some wanted data into the web app.
That's interesting that a nonprogrammer could use it. I am a bit confused as to how this would occur. And even so it seems that there would be many test cases that wouldn't be intuitive to a nonprogrammer to test.
ReplyDeleteI also think it's interesting that a nonprogrammer could use it. If so, then perhaps this could also be used as a learning tool for people with little programming knowledge - at least in the web design domain. It might be a good way to introduce them to the overall process of web design and what to consider during the process.
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