Industrial application of visual GUI testing: Lessons learned

Book chapter, 2014

A large body of academic knowledge has been devoted to automated software testing in order to support the software market's demands for continuous software delivery. However, most of these automated techniques approach testing from lower levels of system abstraction, e.g., component level, which limit their applicability for high-level regression testing of, for instance, system and acceptance tests, thus forcing companies to perform these test activities manually, which is considered time consuming, tedious, and error prone. In this book chapter, we present visual GUI testing (VGT), a tool driven test technique that uses image recognition in order to interact and assert the correctness of a system under test (SUT) through the bitmap graphical user interface (GUI) that is shown to the user on the computer monitor. This approach makes VGT flexible and applicable to any SUT with a GUI but also allows VGT tools to emulate end-user behavior and therefore automate previously manual system and acceptance test cases. In addition to presenting the technique itself, this chapter will also present some VGT tools and empirically identified problems with the technique and how these problems can be mitigated in practice. Finally we will discuss how VGT can be used in the context of continuous software development in order to support market demands for quicker software delivery.