TitleAutomatically repairing broken workflows for evolving GUI applications
Publication TypeConference Paper
Year of Publication2013
AuthorsZhang S, Lü H, Ernst MD
Conference NameISSTA 2013, Proceedings of the 2013 International Symposium on Software Testing and Analysis
Pagination45–55
Date or Month PublishedJuly
Conference LocationLugano, Switzerland
AbstractA workflow is a sequence of UI actions to complete a specific task. In the course of a GUI application's evolution, changes ranging from a simple GUI refactoring to a complete rearchitecture can break an end-user's well-established workflow. It can be challenging to find a replacement workflow. To address this problem, we present a technique (and its tool implementation, called FlowFixer) that repairs a broken workflow. FlowFixer uses dynamic profiling, static analysis, and random testing to suggest a replacement UI action that fixes a broken workflow. \par We evaluated FlowFixer on 16 broken workflows from 5 real-world GUI applications written in Java. In 13 workflows, the correct replacement action was FlowFixer's first suggestion. In 2 workflows, the correct replacement action was FlowFixer's second suggestion. The remaining workflow was un-repairable. Overall, FlowFixer produced significantly better results than two alternative approaches.
Downloadshttps://code.google.com/archive/p/workflow-repairer/ FlowFixer implementation https://homes.cs.washington.edu/~mernst/pubs/repair-workflow-issta2013.pdf PDF https://homes.cs.washington.edu/~mernst/pubs/repair-workflow-issta2013-s... slides (PDF)
Citation KeyZhangLE2013