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Process and Tool Support for Internationalization and Localization Testing in Software Product Development

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Product-Focused Software Process Improvement (PROFES 2017)

Part of the book series: Lecture Notes in Computer Science ((LNPSE,volume 10611))

Abstract

Software globalization is an inevitable step for many companies. Developing for a global market requires the internationalization of software products and their localization to different countries, regions, and cultures. Internationalization and localization testing verifies that localized variants of the software product work, look and feel as expected. The highly repetitive task of testing of multiple language variants makes localization testing a perfect candidate for automation with a high potential to reduce the involved human effort and to speed-up release cycles. However, there is surprisingly little support for localization testing by existing test automation tools. Furthermore, there are only few empirical results or practical insights available as the topic is rarely addressed in the scientific literature. In this paper we describe the process and tools applied for automated testing of the different localized variants of a large commercial software product, we report on the issues detected with automated localization tests, and we discuss our experiences and lessons learned.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    https://www.omicronenergy.com.

  2. 2.

    The work reported in this paper has been conducted in context of the development of a commercial software product, which constrains the publication of defect data. An aggregated overview of detected issues is provided in Table 1.

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Acknowledgments

This research has been supported by the Austrian Research Promotion Agency, the Austrian Ministry for Transport, Innovation and Technology, the Federal Ministry of Science, Research and Economy, and the Province of Upper Austria in the frame of the COMET center SCCH (FFG 844597).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Software Analytics and Evolution, Software Competence Center Hagenberg GmbH, Softwarepark 21, 4232, Hagenberg, Austria

    Rudolf Ramler

  2. OMICRON Electronics GmbH, Oberes Ried 1, 6833, Klaus, Austria

    Robert Hoschek

Authors
  1. Rudolf Ramler
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  2. Robert Hoschek
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Rudolf Ramler .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. University of Innsbruck, Innsbruck, Austria

    Michael Felderer

  2. Technical University Munich, Garching, Germany

    Daniel Méndez Fernández

  3. Brunel University London, Uxbridge, United Kingdom

    Burak Turhan

  4. Pontifical Catholic University of Rio de, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil

    Marcos Kalinowski

  5. University College London, London, United Kingdom

    Federica Sarro

  6. Vienna University of Technology, Vienna, Austria

    Dietmar Winkler

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Ramler, R., Hoschek, R. (2017). Process and Tool Support for Internationalization and Localization Testing in Software Product Development. In: Felderer, M., Méndez Fernández, D., Turhan, B., Kalinowski, M., Sarro, F., Winkler, D. (eds) Product-Focused Software Process Improvement. PROFES 2017. Lecture Notes in Computer Science(), vol 10611. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-69926-4_27

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-69926-4_27

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  • Publisher Name: Springer, Cham

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-319-69925-7

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-319-69926-4

  • eBook Packages: Computer ScienceComputer Science (R0)

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