Database-backed GUI testing framework

Third talk was presented by Gerald Lester.

Designed to test computer aided process planning and shop floor manufacturing system. GUI built to enforce business rule on an Oracle database.

Gray box testing: gather important state info at beginning and the end while monitoring database transactions. Tester friendly: record/playback model (no need to write scripts though recordings must be "editable").

Not designed to be a generic testing tool. Their tool is designed for their application, but the ideas should be applicable to other projects. Techniques can be re-used in testing other GUIs that are front ends to a database with business rules.

State capture: walk visible widget tree. Capture logged in user, variables in widgets. Extract information from the Oracle data dictionary (common cause of bug reports in the field is when a DBA has added a unique index on a column that wasn't intended to be unique). Capture GUI events. Database "events" are compared, not actually played back.

—Michael A. Cleverly
Friday, October 13, 2006 at 09:05