Low-Code Browser Front-End Automation Using RDF Graphs and a Domain-Specific Language for UX Representation
摘要
Software development companies are tackling front-end automation primarily from a software testing perspective or a robotic process automation perspective. Industry solutions still lack a knowledge-focused approach to managing automatable front-end workflows. This paper reports on a Design Science Research treatment employing semantic graphs derived from UX (user experience) flow models repurposed for low-code browser automation. The reported work aims to bridge the interoperability gap between UX design, front-end automation and Knowledge Management, using semantic graphs as means of externalization/combination. We developed a visual designer that captures the human-computer interaction flow in procedural UX descriptions with the help of a domain-specific modeling language. The tool further renders visual models executable through a platform-specific automation script, while at the same time maintaining them as RDF graphs accumulating in a knowledge repository. Execution creates a browser instance that replicates user actions within a limited context. The engine relies on Selenium WebDriver, a popular Test Automation framework, to generate automation out of the procedural UX knowledge captured in visual models. As a technical evaluation we demonstrate the feasibility of a low-code automation scenario using the popular browser-based mail client Microsoft Outlook.