GTAC 2009 - Automatic Workarounds for Web Applications

Google Tech Talk October 21, 2009 ABSTRACT Presented by Alessandra Gorla and Mauro Pezzè, University of Lugano, at the 4th Annual Google Test Automation Conference, October 21st, 22nd, 2009, Zurich, CH We introduce an approach to automatically avoid failures that may derive from unexpected interactions between web applications and APIs. Faults in popular APIs, like Google Maps, may affect many users, who must rely on API developers who fix these faults. Asynchronous communication mechanisms and different priorities between API developers and application users may delay fault fixing and reduce dependability of web applications. Fault repositories and forums often suggests temporary workarounds to avoid or mitigate the effects of open faults. We show that many faults can be indeed avoided with workarounds that exploit intrinsic redundancy of web applications, and we indicate how some important classes of workarounds can be automatically generated, thus reducing the impact of interaction faults between Web applications and API. Successful exploitation of automatic workarounds can lead to libraries of rules reusable across applications. Bios: Alessandra Gorla is a Ph.D. candidate in Informatics at the University of Lugano (Switzerland). She holds a Bachelor and an MSc degree in Computer Science both from the University of Milano Bicocca (Italy). Her research interests include software testing and analysis, and self-healing systems. Alessandra Gorla works on contextual data flow analysis and on automatic generation of valid workarounds. Mauro Pezzè is a Professor of Software Engineering and Dean of the Faculty of Informatics of the University of Lugano. He holds a position of professor of software engineering also at the University of Milano Bicocca. Mauro Pezzè is associate editor of ACM Transactions on Software Engineering and Methodology and member of the Steering Committees of the International Conference of Software Engineering (ICSE) and of the ACM International Conference on Software Testing and Analysis (ISSTA). He is a co-author of many papers on software engineering and software testing, and is the co-author of a book on Software Testing and Analysis published by John Wiley in 2008.