Skip to main content

Is Low Coupling an Important Design Principle to KDT Scripts?

  • Conference paper
  • First Online:
Frontier Computing (FC 2016)

Part of the book series: Lecture Notes in Electrical Engineering ((LNEE,volume 422))

Included in the following conference series:

  • 1246 Accesses

Abstract

In keyword-driven testing (KDT) , a keyword represents a sequence of actions (events and assertions) and a test case is constructed by using a sequence of keywords. That is, in a KDT script, a test case depends on a number of keywords, and a keyword depends on some other keywords and GUI components. Such dependency is also known as the coupling between test cases, keywords, and components. This paper studies the question of whether low coupling is an important design principle to KDT Scripts. A coupling measure, called unweighted coupling, is proposed. A case study is conducted to assess the maintainability and readability of KDT scripts with different couplings . The results indicated that, when maintaining KDT scripts, a low-coupling script required, on average, less changes than a high-coupling one. On the other hand, a low-coupling script does not necessarily offer a better readability .

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this chapter

Chapter
USD 29.95
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Available as PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever
eBook
USD 259.00
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Available as EPUB and PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever
Softcover Book
USD 329.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Compact, lightweight edition
  • Dispatched in 3 to 5 business days
  • Free shipping worldwide - see info
Hardcover Book
USD 329.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Durable hardcover edition
  • Dispatched in 3 to 5 business days
  • Free shipping worldwide - see info

Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout

Purchases are for personal use only

Institutional subscriptions

References

  1. Chen, W.K., Shen, Z.W., Tsai, T.H.: Integration of specification-based and cr-based approaches for GUI testing. J. Inf. Sci. Eng. 24(5), 1293–1307 (2008)

    Google Scholar 

  2. Memon, A.M., Pollack, M.E., Soffa, M.L.: Hierarchical GUI test case generation using automated planning. IEEE Trans. Softw. Eng. 27(2), 144–155 (2001)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  3. Robot framework, http://robotframework.org/, Feb. 1, 2016

  4. Fewster, M., Graham, D.: Software Test Automation. Addison-Wesley Professional (1999)

    Google Scholar 

  5. HP: Unified functional testing (UFT), http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HP_QuickTest_Professional, Feb. 1, 2016

  6. Kaner, C., Bach, J., Pettichord, B.: Lessons Learned in Software Testing: A Context-Driven Approach. Wiley (2001)

    Google Scholar 

  7. Dhama, H.: Quantitative models of cohesion and coupling in software. Journal of Systems and Software 29(1), 65–74 (1995)

    Google Scholar 

  8. Fenton, N., Melton, A.: Deriving structurally based software measures. Journal of Systems and Software 12(3), 177–187 (1990)

    Google Scholar 

  9. Larman, C.: Applying UML and Patterns, 3rd Ed. Prentice Hall PTR (2004)

    Google Scholar 

  10. Myers, G.J.: Reliable Software Through Composite Design. Petrocelli/Charter (1975)

    Google Scholar 

  11. Westgarth, B.: Crossword sage, http://crosswordsage.sourceforge.net, Feb. 1, 2016

  12. Chen, W.K., Wang, J.C.: Bad smells and refactoring methods for GUI test scripts. In: Software Engineering, Artificial Intelligence, Networking and Parallel Distributed Computing (SNPD), 2012 13th ACIS International Conference on. pp. 289–294 (Aug 2012)

    Google Scholar 

  13. Memon, A.M.: Automatically repairing event sequence-based GUI test suites for regression testing. ACM Trans. on Softw. Eng. and Method. (2008)

    Google Scholar 

  14. Xie, Q., Memon, A.M.: Using a pilot study to derive a GUI model for automated testing. ACM Trans. Softw. Eng. Methodol. 18(2) (2008)

    Google Scholar 

  15. Yuan, X., Memon, A.M.: Generating event sequence-based test cases using GUI runtime state feedback. IEEE Transactions on Software Engineering 36(1), 81–95 (Jan 2010)

    Article  Google Scholar 

Download references

Acknowledgements

This research was partially supported by the Ministry of Science and Technology, R.O.C., under contract number MOST 104-2221-E-027-008, which is gratefully acknowledged.

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

Authors

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Woei-Kae Chen .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

Copyright information

© 2018 Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd.

About this paper

Cite this paper

Chen, WK., Liu, CH., Chen, PH., Wang, Y. (2018). Is Low Coupling an Important Design Principle to KDT Scripts?. In: Yen, N., Hung, J. (eds) Frontier Computing. FC 2016. Lecture Notes in Electrical Engineering, vol 422. Springer, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-10-3187-8_6

Download citation

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-10-3187-8_6

  • Published:

  • Publisher Name: Springer, Singapore

  • Print ISBN: 978-981-10-3186-1

  • Online ISBN: 978-981-10-3187-8

  • eBook Packages: EngineeringEngineering (R0)

Publish with us

Policies and ethics