Maintenance of a subroutine repository for an application under test based on subroutine usage information

• US 8,904,351 B2
• Filed: 07/30/2012
• Issued: 12/02/2014
• Est. Priority Date: 12/21/2011
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: International Business Machines Corporation
• Original Assignee: International Business Machines Corporation
• Inventors: Mahmud, Jalal U.
• Primary Examiner(s): Wong, Don
• Assistant Examiner(s): Wu, Daxin
• Application Number:
  US13/562,299
• Publication Number:
  US 20130167116A1
• Time in Patent Office: 855 Days
• Field of Search: None
• US Class Current: 717/120
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 11/3672 Test management

Abstract

Embodiments of the invention relate to maintaining a repository of subroutines used by a software program under test based on an analysis of subroutine usage logs. One aspect of the invention concerns a method that comprises analyzing a log of subroutine usage by an application under test to identify subroutines used by the application based on actions in the subroutines, and comparing the identified subroutines against a repository of subroutines applicable to the application. The method may further designate a subroutine in the repository as a matching subroutine, modify or delete a subroutine, or add a new subroutine to the repository.

Claims

1. A method executed by a processor comprising:

analyzing a log of subroutine usage by an application under test to identify subroutines used by the application based on actions in the subroutines, wherein the identifying subroutines comprises;

segment the log into sequences of related actions based on a time period;

map each sequence of related actions into a sequence of action classes;

analyze the resulting sequences of action classes to identify a common substring; and

output the common substring as one of the subroutines used by the application;

comparing the identified subroutines against a repository of subroutines applicable to the application; and

designating a first subroutine in the repository as a matching subroutine wherein the first subroutine is used by the application.

2. The method of claim 1, further comprising deleting a second subroutine in the repository wherein the second subroutine is not used by the application.

3. The method of claim 1, further comprising adding a second subroutine to the repository wherein the second subroutine is used by the application but not in the repository.

4. The method of claim 1, wherein the subroutine repository is initialized with a user list of subroutines.

5. The method of claim 1, wherein each of the subroutines is a sequence of action steps.

6. The method of claim 1, wherein a second subroutine in the repository partially matches one of the identified subroutines and the method identifies the second subroutine for possible modification.

7. The method of claim 1, wherein the application under test is a web application and the subroutine usage log is a web interaction log.