Can Commercial Testing Automation Tools Work for IoT? A Case Study of Selenium and Node-Red
This addresses testing automation for IoT developers, but it is incremental as it adapts existing tools to a new context.
The study tackled the challenge of testing IoT software by exploring requirements and integrating commercial automation tools, specifically using Selenium with Node-Red, and found it feasible but identified major challenges like high data volumes and parallel processing.
Background: Testing IoT software is challenging due to large scale, volume of data and heterogeneity. Testing automation is a much-needed feature in the domain. Aims: The first goal of this research is to explore the requirements and challenges of IoT testing automation. The second goal is to integrate testing automation tools used in commercial software into the IoT context. Method: A systematic literature review is carried out to elicit requirements for testing automation in IoT. A design science approach is followed to build a testing automation tool for IoT applications written in the Node-Red platform, using the commercial testing automation tool Selenium. The resulting framework uses the Selenium Web Driver for browser-based testing automation for IoT applications. Results: The proposed framework has been functionally tested on multiple browsers with preliminary evaluation on maintainability, browser capability and comprehensiveness. Conclusions: The use of commercial tools for testing automation in IoT is feasible. However, major challenges like high data volumes and parallel transmission and processing of data need to be addressed comprehensively for complete integration.