Voborník, P.: Universal Testing Environment. Ph.D. thesis, University of Hradec Králové, 2012.

Anotation

The thesis “Universal Testing Environment” focuses on the electronic testing, e-testing, its current possibilities and the issues of new product development, same as solutions for numerous specific tasks in this field.

The first part analyzes the present state, describes and evaluates several existing systems for various categories of e-testing. The shortcomings of these systems were identified through user questionnaires evaluation and thus have become the basis, together with undoubtedly their positive qualities, for the design and gradual creation of a universal testing environment. It attempts to avoid the shortcomings of existing systems, to enlarge and to enrich the functionality by new desirable functions and at the same time it reflects the current contemporary trends in application development.

The second part of the thesis presents the results of this main goal (i.e. the creation of the universal testing environment) and of the particular goals (i.e. original solutions of tasks important for the main goal).

A proprietary language is introduced for the creation of testing questions, it enables to present them in rich graphic and interactive presentation, and it also offers the possibility to use random selections directly for individual questions. Thanks to that they can be used repeatedly without the risk of being interpreted mechanically, i.e. without the true understanding of the matter. The usage of this function does not limit in any way the automatic evaluation of the tests, on the contrary it offers a much wider possibility for the overall or partial evaluation of the testing results, including the support for the resemblance of two text strings calculation containing a typing error.

Problems created by the development of the testing environment are presented in the following subchapters. They were solved by original procedures based on current know-how and research. The guidelines for these subsystems were also designed and described so that they could be used also outside of this project as the basis or an overall methodology for the research and development of similar systems.

For example a new way for the selection of test questions was created which takes into account the previous results and the training curve. Characteristic strings again enable advance work with random elements inside the testing topics and their use for the generating of more varied than just merely random values. The specific protected communication between the client application and the server via the internet is described, from the user-end, the coding of the data, and also automatic efficient exchange and object-relational data mapping. For the administrator interface the access to the configuration framework was designed, created and described, it represents an alternative to the classical frameworks programmed structurally or in objects. It brings numerous advantages namely for the development of desktop or RIA information systems.

In many cases the optimal solution was reached through newly created mini-languages which can be an inspiration not only for their direct use in future projects but namely as a guidance for the solution of some new problems.

In the concluding chapters you will find examples of the presently used universal testing environments and their integration into third party application interface.