Collaborative Research: SHF: Medium: A General Framework for Automated Test Transfer

NSF Award Search · 01002425DB NSF RESEARCH & RELATED ACTIVIT · $400,000 · view on nsf.gov ↗

Abstract

Because software is increasingly prevalent in day-to-day life, it is extremely important to ensure its quality. Among the various techniques used to assess and improve the quality of software, testing is by far the most used. Unfortunately, writing tests is a tedious and time-consuming task that is often performed manually and mostly from scratch for every new application developed. In fact, whereas it is common practice to reuse code in modern software engineering, test reuse has been mostly neglected. Testing could greatly benefit from the fact that many software applications share functionality, and test cases for many of these applications are readily available, although in need of adaptation to be transferred to different test scenarios. To tap into this potential, this project is advancing software testing by enabling test transfer: automated reuse of User Interface (UI) tests across systems that share at least part of their functionality. While the initial focus of the project is on mobile and web applications, its ultimate goal is to develop a modular framework that can be extended to support additional types of software. This project promises to advance automated testing on multiple fronts. First, by employing various analysis techniques to identify conceptually similar UI elements across apps, test transfer is intended to enable the reuse of test inputs that are otherwise difficult to produce automatically. Second, by migrating tests written for similar features,

Key facts

NSF award ID
2538540
Awardee
University of Georgia Research Foundation Inc (GA)
SAM.gov UEI
NMJHD63STRC5
PI
Alessandro Orso
Primary program
01002425DB NSF RESEARCH & RELATED ACTIVIT
All programs
MEDIUM PROJECT, SOFTWARE ENG & FORMAL METHODS
Estimated total
$400,000
Funds obligated
$143,333
Transaction type
Continuing Grant
Period
07/01/2025 → 09/30/2026