SYNTest: Prototype of Syntax Test Case Generation Tool

This paper proposes a novel prototype of a web-based software testing tool, SYNTest (Syntax Test Case Generation Tool) to increase the quality of existing software testing practices. This tool implements the syntax testing technique in which regular expression is used to implement the syntax patterns. This results in the sequence of pattern or syntax to be captured and analysed from the data dictionary metadata that conforms with the use case description of system requirement specification. Test cases enabling the coverage of all possible testing scenarios are automatically generated from both valid and invalid syntax. The result of demonstration and evaluation with two case studies shows the usefulness and effectiveness of SYNTest tool as we expected.

I. Introduction

Software testing has played an important role in the software development process. It is a process aiming at not only checking the software under test to ensure that it is free from errors and meets customer's needs but also enabling a cost reduction in the maintenance stage [1]. Therefore, more recently, software developers have realised the importance of software testing than in the past. One of the difficulties of current software testing is the lack of free testing tools which provide the appropriate and suitable software testing technique. Most free testing tools (e.g. Selenium [2] and Junit [3]) just perform an automated execution of the system under test. Software testers have to create test cases manually and then input them to these tools [4]. Furthermore, as the testing coverage is the heart of software testing [1], [5]–[7], test cases must be designed to cover all possible testing scenarios for all functionality of the system under test [5], [8]. This is still required in the current automated testing tool.