User interface testing environment for eclipse-based applications

Software development organizations has currently adopted the use of software on top of Eclipse using plug-ins, extending the basic functionality offered to the user. These organization are challenged by the testing of their software systems, because each plugin provides new functionality and user interface parts. To enable efficient test case development and test case execution for user interface features, we developed ScATE (Scenario-based Application Test Environment). ScATE uses its own domain-specific test language with comfortable editor, test case generation, and automated test run execution. Thus ScATE applies concepts from model-driven testing together with user interface testing to support the latter and achieve its goals using xText, SWTBot, and Ant technologies. We applied ScATE to develop an initial set of test cases to the Fraunhofer SAVE (Software Architecture Visualization and Evaluation) tool. With those test cases, we were able to change basic preferences as well as extract facts from the different application's source code, for example. The user feedback writing test cases was positive overall and users were able to successfully specify, run, and manage test cases. However, there are unavailable test actions due to the SWTBot API, which are still under development by the Eclipse community.