Model-based testing in practice: An experience report from the web applications domain

• Published in: The Journal of systems and software 2021-10, Vol.180, p.111032, Article 111032
• Main Authors: Garousi, Vahid, Keleş, Alper Buğra, Balaman, Yunus, Güler, Zeynep Özdemir, Arcuri, Andrea
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: Applied research report; Experience report; Model-based testing; Software testing; Test automation; Web applications
• ISSN: 0164-1212; 1873-1228
• DOI: 10.1016/j.jss.2021.111032

In the context of a software testing company, we have deployed the model-based testing (MBT) approach to take the company’s test automation practices to higher levels of maturity and capability. We have chosen, from a set of open-source/commercial MBT tools, an open-source tool named GraphWalker, and have pragmatically used MBT for end-to-end test automation of several large web and mobile applications under test. The MBT approach has provided, so far in our project, various tangible and intangible benefits in terms of improved test coverage (number of paths tested), improved test-design practices, and also improved real-fault detection effectiveness. The goal of this experience report (applied research report), done based on “action research”, is to share our experience of applying and evaluating MBT as a software technology (technique and tool) in a real industrial setting. We aim at contributing to the body of empirical evidence in industrial application of MBT by sharing our industry-academia project on applying MBT in practice, the insights that we have gained, and the challenges and questions that we have faced and tackled so far. We discuss an overview of the industrial setting, provide motivation, explain the events leading to the outcomes, discuss the challenges faced, summarize the outcomes, and conclude with lessons learned, take-away messages, and practical advices based on the described experience. By learning from the best practices in this paper, other test engineers could conduct more mature MBT in their test projects. •We deployed model-based testing (MBT) to increase the maturity of test practices.•MBT has provided various tangible and intangible benefits.•Including MBT in the Continuous Integration (CI) pipeline was a good practice.•This work contributes to the empirical evidence body in application of MBT.