Declarative Testing: A Paradigm for Testing Software Applications

Traditional techniques to test a software application through the application's graphical user interface have a number of weaknesses. Manual testing is slow, expensive, and does not scale well as the size and complexity of the application increases. Software test automation which exercises an application through the application's UI using an API set can be difficult to maintain. We propose a software testing paradigm called declarative testing. In declarative testing, a test scenario focuses on what to accomplish rather than on the imperative details of how to manipulate the state of an application under test and verify the final application state against an expected state. Declarative testing is a test design paradigm which separates test automation code into conceptual Answer, Executor, and Verifier entities. Preliminary experience with declarative testing suggests that the modular characteristics of the paradigm may significantly enhance the ability of a testing effort to keep pace with the evolution of a software application during the application's development process.