Event driven test case selection for regression testing web applications

Traditional testing techniques are not apt for the multifaceted web-based applications, since they miss the additional features of web applications such as their multi-tier nature, hyperlink-based structure, and event-driven feature. As software systems evolve, errors sometimes sneak in; software that has been tested on certain inputs may fail to work on those same inputs in the future. Regression testing aims to detect these errors by comparing present behavior with past behavior. Although regression testing has been widely used to gain confidence in the reliability of software by providing information about the quality of an application, it has suffered limited use in this domain due to the frequent nature of updates to websites and the difficulty of automatically comparing test case output. In this paper we propose a new paradigm that exploits regression testing to be used by web applications. This event-driven technique is based on the creation of event-dependency graph of the original and modified web application, then converting the original and modified web application graph into event test tree, followed by the comparison of both trees to identify affected and potentially affected nodes which enables selection of test cases for regression testing web applications finally reducing the test set size. We apply this technique to a case study to demonstrate the usefulness of the proposed paradigm.