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Combinatorial Testing of Full Text Search in Web Applications

Published

Author(s)

M S Raunak, David R. Kuhn, Raghu N. Kacker

Abstract

Database driven web applications are some of most widely developed systems today. Testing these applications effectively and discovering difficult-to-find bugs continues to be a challenge for software engineers. In this paper, we show that combinatorial testing can be quite useful in testing database supported web applications, especially where fulltext search is provided or many combinations of search options are utilized. We propose and examine some test-case selection techniques, where test strings are synthesized using characters or string-fragments that can potentially lead to system failure. We have applied our approach over the National Vulnerability Database (NVD) application and have discovered a number of failures that have previously been unknown, despite extensive testing and many years of operation. We also present simple heuristics for isolating the fault causing factors that can lead to such system failures. The test method and input model described in this paper have immediate application to other systems that provide complex full text search.
Proceedings Title
Conference: IEEE International Conference on Software Quality Reliability and Security
IEEE International Conference on Software Quality Reliability and Security, prague, Czech Republic,
07/25/2017 to 07/29/2017
Conference Dates
July 25-29, 2017
Conference Location
Prague
Conference Title
IEEE International Conference on Software Quality Reliability and Security,

Keywords

combinatorial testing, database search, SQL testing

Citation

Raunak, M. , Kuhn, D. and Kacker, R. (2017), Combinatorial Testing of Full Text Search in Web Applications, Conference: IEEE International Conference on Software Quality Reliability and Security IEEE International Conference on Software Quality Reliability and Security, prague, Czech Republic, 07/25/2017 to 07/29/2017, Prague, -1, [online], https://doi.org/10.1109/QRS-C.2017.24 (Accessed April 23, 2024)
Created August 18, 2017, Updated November 10, 2018