Concept

The AutoQUEST project is based on a simple idea: it should be possible to apply quality assurance techniques that use events independent of the event-driven software platform. With this idea in mind, we devised a framework with three layers, that defines how a software where the platform-independent application is possible should look like.

• A Platform Layer that contains the platform-dependent parts of the software, e.g., platform specific events like "click with the left mouse button on an Ok button in a Windows MFC application".
• An Event Layer that provides the quality assurance techniques and works independent of any specific event-driven software platform.
• A Translation Layer that mediates between the platform layer and the event layer, i.e., converts between platform specific the platform independent parts of the software.

The following image depicts the structure and components of the framework. The colors indicate to which layer a component belongs: red for the platform layer, blue for the translation layer, and yellow for the event layer.

While the framework currently only includes usage-based testing and usability analysis, the general principles are applicable to model-based testing techniques as well. In the future, we plan to extend our framework in this direction. The AutoQUEST project is our implementation of the generic framework.