International Journal of Computer Applications (0975 – 8887) Volume 6– No.11, September 2010 7 Xml Schema Based Approach for Testing of Software Components Manpreet Kaur Assistant Professor RIMT-MAEC Mandi Gobindgarh Neeshu Sharma Assistant Professor RIMT-MAEC Mandi Gobindgarh Reet Kamal Kaur Assistant Professor RIMT-MAEC Mandi Gobindgarh ABSTRACT The widespread usefulness of Graphical User Interfaces has made GUIs the most important component of software today. As the GUI have characteristics like event driven input, mouse clicks etc., and the testing of conventional software cannot be applied on the GUI’s. One of the most important innovations that strongly contribute to solve this issue has been the introduction of the Extensible Markup Language (XML) .The XML Schema based testing is introduced to combine the great potential of XML Schema in describing input data in open and standard form, with testing activity. We have theoretically analyzed different components based testing techniques especially XML based testing and regression testing. We have written the representation or specification of GUI in XML which is validated by XML Schema. Program have been written reads the XML and to generate the test sequences. We have developed XML Regression Test Suite Modeler to perform testing of GUI component. It includes Test Case Generator, GUI Comparer and Regression Test Suite Generator as the main components. A case study applying the proposed approach is described and results are presented. Keywords XML, XML Schema, GUI testing, test coverage, test cases, regression testing. 1. INTRODUCTION Graphical user interface are the most popular means used to interact with today’s software. The functional correctness of GUI is of utmost importance and it’s required to ensure the safety, robustness and usability of entire software. GUI’s are hierarchical in nature.GUI testing for functional correctness is a challenging research area. Testing is, in general, labor and resource intensive, accounting for 50-60% of the total cost of software development. GUI testing is especially difficult today because GUIs have characteristics different from those of traditional software, and thus, techniques typically applied to software testing are not adequate. Current GUI testing techniques are incomplete, ad-hoc, and largely manual . The test data required for testing GUI is huge sometimes so manual approach isn’t suitable. Manual testing makes regression task more laborious and time consuming and longer times are needed for test coverage. We propose a XML Schema based representation for GUI testing, which is capable of simulating the hierarchical nature of the GUI and stores the event interaction information. It satisfies a number of testing coverage criteria’s for effective test case generation. Testing GUI’s for functional correctness is needed to ensure the overall correctness of these applications. The proposed model also promotes reusability. Once created it can be quickly redeployed to generate additional test cases for the same or modified version of GUI, thus providing an effective regression testing facility. The main objectives of XML Schema Based Testing are as follows: To explore the impact of XML Schema based testing on software component. To design an improved XML Schema testing technique that works both for built-in and third party component and follows the automation of test data generation Study the XML quality factors to optimize the XML Schema. Finally to validate the testing technique by using some coverage criteria for XML Schema based testing of components. To study the characteristics of GUI components in the software. Using the characteristics of GUI component to generate test data for various coverage criteria’s. Creating a framework for generation of XML Regression Test Suite Modeler for GUI. 2. XML SCHEMA XML Schema was approved as a W3C Recommendation in May, 2001 and is now being widely used for structuring XML documents for E-commerce and web Services applications. XML Schema Recommendation has significant value for XML based publishing applications. An XML schema describes the structure of an XML document. The XML Schema language is also referred to as XML Schema Definition (XSD). The purpose of an XML Schema is to define the legal building blocks of an XML document. The XML Schema verifies and validates XML document and checks for its well-formedness. XML Schema defines the valid contents of particular elements and attributes as well as an ability to define the data structure and content of XML documents.