Integration of specification-based and CR-based approaches for GUI testing

A common method for GUI testing is the CR (capture and replay) script technique. However, a deficiency of CR based technologies is that test scripts cannot be generated before an application under test is ready for testing. Thus, test specification based approaches have been studied as alternatives. In this paper, we propose the concept of integrating the design of GUI specification languages and CR tools. Our approach is to endow a CR tool with the support of writing and replaying GUI specifications. We implement a visual GUI testing tool (GTT) for Java applications to demonstrate our results. We discuss the techniques used in GTT, including event model, event abstraction, and test points. We also show how to apply GTT in a test-first programming style for GUI testing.