Can Cooperative Multi-Agent Reinforcement Learning Boost Automatic Web Testing? An Exploratory Study
Reinforcement learning (RL)-based automatic web GUI testing techniques have gained significant attraction in both academia and industry due to their ability to facilitate intelligent exploration in the websites under testing. However, the testing performance of a single RL agent often reaches its limit in testing large-scale websites. To address this limitation, we propose to utilize Multi-Agent RL (MARL) algorithms for automatic web GUI testing, aiming to improve test efficiency and coverage. The use of multiple agents introduces challenges of state explosion. How to sharing data for effective cooperation among the agents should also be addressed. In this paper, we propose the first \textbf{\underline{MAR}}L-based web \textbf{\underline{G}}UI testing system (MARG) that allows multiple testing agents to perform automatic web GUI testing simultaneously. It adopts a client-server architecture, in which the agents perform web testing and a controller is responsible for coordination. To share testing experience among the agents, two data sharing schemes are implemented on the controller: one is centralized with a shared Q-table to facilitate efficient communication, and the other is distributed with data exchange to decrease overhead. We evaluated the performance of MARG on nine popular real-world websites. When configure the system with five agents, MARG achieves an average increase of 4.34 and 3.89 times in the number of explored states, and the number of detected failures reached 4.03 and 3.76 times, respectively, compared to two state-of-the-art approaches. Compared to independently running the same number of agents, MARG can explore 36.42% more unique web states. These results demonstrate the potential of MARL in enhancing efficiency and performance in large-scale web GUI testing tasks.
Tue 29 OctDisplayed time zone: Pacific Time (US & Canada) change
13:30 - 15:00 | Web and UIResearch Papers / Industry Showcase / Tool Demonstrations at Carr Chair(s): Mattia Fazzini University of Minnesota | ||
13:30 15mTalk | Beyond Manual Modeling: Automating GUI Model Generation Using Design Documents Research Papers Shaoheng Cao Nanjing University, Renyi Chen Samsung Electronics(China)R&D Centre, Minxue Pan Nanjing University, Wenhua Yang Nanjing University of Aeronautics and Astronautics, Xuandong Li Nanjing University | ||
13:45 15mTalk | Towards a Robust Waiting Strategy for Web GUI Testing for an Industrial Software System Industry Showcase Haonan Zhang University of Waterloo, Lizhi Liao Memorial University of Newfoundland, Zishuo Ding The Hong Kong University of Science and Technology (Guangzhou), Weiyi Shang University of Waterloo, Nidhi Narula ERA Environmental, Catalin Sporea ERA Environmental Management Solutions, Andrei Toma ERA Environmental Management Solutions, Sarah Sajedi ERA Environmental Management Solutions | ||
14:00 15mTalk | Navigating Mobile Testing Evaluation: A Comprehensive Statistical Analysis of Android GUI Testing Metrics Research Papers Yuanhong Lan Nanjing University, Yifei Lu Nanjing University, Minxue Pan Nanjing University, Xuandong Li Nanjing University | ||
14:15 15mTalk | Can Cooperative Multi-Agent Reinforcement Learning Boost Automatic Web Testing? An Exploratory Study Research Papers Yujia Fan Southern University of Science and Technology, Sinan Wang Southern University of Science and Technology, Zebang Fei Southern University of Science and Technology, Yao Qin Southern University of Science and Technology, Huaxuan Li Southern University of Science and Technology, Yepang Liu Southern University of Science and Technology | ||
14:30 10mTalk | Enabling Cost-Effective UI Automation Testing with Retrieval-Based LLMs: A Case Study in WeChat Industry Showcase Sidong Feng Monash University, Haochuan Lu Tencent, Jianqin Jiang Tencent Inc., Ting Xiong Tencent Inc., Likun Huang Tencent Inc., Yinglin Liang Tencent Inc., Xiaoqin Li Tencent Inc., Yuetang Deng Tencent, Aldeida Aleti Monash University | ||
14:40 10mTalk | Self-Elicitation of Requirements with Automated GUI Prototyping Tool Demonstrations Kristian Kolthoff Institute for Enterprise Systems (InES), University Of Mannheim, Christian Bartelt , Simone Paolo Ponzetto Data and Web Science Group, University of Mannheim, Kurt Schneider Leibniz Universität Hannover, Software Engineering Group DOI Pre-print Media Attached |