A systematic literature review on semantic web enabled software testing

•Provide a better understanding of how Semantic Web can support software testing.•Investigate details of Semantic Web enabled techniques for software testing.•Explore potential value of the Semantic Web technologies to software testing.•Show promising opportunities to be explored in future research and practice.•Identify the obstacles in realization of the explored potentials. Software testing, as a major verification and validation activity which revolves around quality tests, is a knowledge-intensive activity. Hence, it is reasonable to expect that it can be improved by effective application of semantic web technologies, e.g., ontologies, which have been frequently used in knowledge engineering activities. The objective of this work is to investigate and provide a better understanding of how semantic web enabled techniques, i.e., the techniques that are based on the effective application of the semantic web technologies, have been used to support software testing activities. For this purpose, a Systematic Literature Review based on a predefined procedure is conducted. A total of 52 primary studies were identified as relevant, which have undergone a thorough meta-analysis with regards to our posed research questions. This study indicates the benefits of semantic web enabled software testing in both industry and academia. It also identifies main software testing activities that can benefit from the semantic web enabled techniques. Furthermore, contributions of such techniques to the testing process are thoroughly examined. Finally, potentials and difficulties of applying these techniques to software testing, along with the promising research directions are discussed.