Software Analysis for the Web: Achievements and Prospects

The web has had a significant impact on our lives. A technology that was initially created for sharing documents across the network has evolved into a strong medium for developing and distributing software applications. In this paper, we first provide a concise overview of the evolution of the web itself. We then focus on some of the main industrial and research achievements in software analysis and testing techniques geared toward web apps, in the past two decades. We discuss static, dynamic, and hybrid analyses approaches, software testing and test adequacy techniques, as well as techniques that help developers write, analyze and maintain their code. Finally, we present some of the current and future challenges and research opportunities ahead in this field.