Testing a Web application

The work describes the requirements and constraints of testing a Web application system for the Austrian Chamber of Commerce. It separates the testing task into two parts - one for testing the Web architecture and one for testing the Internet application itself. The high costs of testing an Internet application are driven not only by the complexity of the architecture, but also by the complex usage profiles of the application. Non-functional quality characteristics such as usability, performance, security and interoperability take on particular importance in Web-based systems. Without a staff of skilled testers equipped with automated tools, it is not possible to ensure the reliability of e-commerce applications. The evolution of such systems requires that the evolved application be tested against the old one. In the project referred to here, a comparison tool was developed to validate both the backend data base contents and the front-end Web page contents.