Distributed GUI Test Automation

The paper provides the design of a distributed test system for testing distributed GUI (Graphical User Interface) applications. The distributed GUI application that is considered allows multiple operators or users to interact with a distributed system in parallel. The distributed GUI application allows the use of existing GUI test frameworks for local test execution and offers additional services of coordination and synchronization among the deployed GUI test frameworks, test verdict arbitration, and debugging support, all of which are needed to deal with the concurrent nature of the system under test. In addition, the paper offers a test specification method for test cases that is based on the semantic model of a concurrent event flow graph. This method allows the automatic test case execution on top of the suggested distributed test system. The overall approach allows the extension of testing of single GUI application systems towards testing of distributed GUI application systems by preserving investments in test automation for single GUI testing.