Techniques and tools for Rich Internet Applications testing

The User Interfaces of Rich Internet Applications (RIAs) present a richer functionality and enhanced usability than the ones of traditional Web applications which are obtained by means of a successful combination of heterogeneous technologies, frameworks, and communication models. Due to its increased complexity, dynamicity, and responsiveness, testing the user interfaces of an RIA is more complex than testing the user interfaces of a traditional Web application and requires that effective and efficient testing techniques are proposed and validated. In this paper we analyse the most critical open issues in RIA testing automation and propose a classification framework that characterizes existing RIA testing techniques from four different perspectives. Driven by this classification, we present a set of testing techniques that can be used for automatically and semi-automatically generating test cases, for executing them and evaluating their results. Some examples of applying the proposed techniques for testing real Ajax applications will also be shown in the paper.