Automated web application testing using search based software engineering

This paper introduces three related algorithms and a tool, SWAT, for automated web application testing using Search Based Software Testing (SBST). The algorithms significantly enhance the efficiency and effectiveness of traditional search based techniques exploiting both static and dynamic analysis. The combined approach yields a 54% increase in branch coverage and a 30% reduction in test effort. Each improvement is separately evaluated in an empirical study on 6 real world web applications.