final data driven testing ebook

8/9/2019 Final Data Driven Testing eBook

1/18


2/18

What is Data-Driven Testing?

Contents

Introduction

Creating a New Project

Recording an Automated Test

Modifying the Data-Driven Test

Changing out Operations Based on Data

Executing a Data-Driven Test and Checking Results

TestCompleteby SMART BEAR

What is Data-Driven Testing? | Page 1

2

5

6

10

11

14

http://smartbear.com/products/qa-tools/automated-testing-tools/http://smartbear.com/products/qa-tools/automated-testing-tools/http://smartbear.com/products/qa-tools/automated-testing-tools/http://smartbear.com/products/qa-tools/automated-testing-tools/http://smartbear.com/products/qa-tools/automated-testing-tools/


3/18

Introduction

Data-driven testing is one of the most powerful items in a

tester’s toolkit – and for good reason: it is a process which can

maximize time savings and increase test coverage. Simply

put, it is the process of designing a test, parameterizing it and

running it in an iterative manner with varying data. This allows

the tester to increase coverage by ensuring a wide range of

input variables pass. Using an automated testing tool, such as

TestComplete, allows a tester to supercharge this process by:

• Generating a large volume of randomized data

• Managing an automated test from design to

execution utilizing the generated data

• Report and analyze the results – all in a matter of

minutes!

A key aspect of data-driven testing is using data that isexternal to your functional tests, which is then loaded and

used to extend your automated test cases. You can take the

same test case and run it with as many different inputs as you

like, thus getting better coverage from a single test. True to the

name, it’s the data that drives the test, which is what makes

it so powerful. This data can be stored in an Excel document,

a MySQL database or another data source. Since automatingrepetitive tests means that you don’t need to test each piece

of data manually, data-driven testing can result in time and

financial savings for a development effort – time and

resources which can be redirected to other areas of need

within your testing team.





4/18

To illustrate how impactful data-driven testing can be, let’s

apply the key concepts to an everyday, practical problem from

outside of the office. Imagine you are about to embark on

a long road trip, but your old car does not appear to be up

for the task – the engine is making noises and your mileagehasn’t been great. Before you hit the road, it might be best

to take your car in for a tune-up. After running a few manual

diagnostic tests and fixing your engine, your mechanic might

do a few other things to help your car perform better.

• Inflating the tires to the proper pressure will help you

maximize your miles per gallon and help you get more

out of every tank of gas. In a sense, data-driven testing

is the same way, helping you squeeze more coverage

into every test.

Replacing an old, dirty air filter will drastically improve

your horsepower. In the same sense, using a tool thatautomatically generates data for your tests will help

turbocharge your automated tests.

• Before leaving the shop, your car might get hooked up

to a diagnostics tool to test each of the systems within

your engine – just to make sure everything

is in working order. Having robust reportingcapabilities within a testing tool serves a similar

function, allowing you to see the results of your

automated tests, and identify areas where

performance is lacking.





5/18

Data-driven testing can help you get the most out of your

automated testing, especially when coupled with a tool that

allows you to generate data and report on your results. In the

next section, we’ll demonstrate how this can all be done using

TestComplete.

Although most automated testing tools allow you to perform

data-driven testing, a feature that can really help take your

results to the next level is data generation. TestComplete’s

data generator allows you to quickly build Excel files or internal

tables full of data. It is able to create data in 19 predefined

types, including email addresses, zip code, phone numbers and

more. Additionally, there are customizable strings for users to

build data specific to their needs. Once this data is created, it

can be incorporated into your data-driven test immediately,

saving time associated with building data sets.





6/18

Now that we have a basic understanding of what data-driven

testing is and why we use frameworks to build out data-driven

test cases, you can now learn how to build your automated

test within TestComplete. TestComplete allows us to quickly

and easily script out our test automation and grab the

appropriate code from any of our frameworks.

Creating a New Project

First, we will create a new TestComplete project. To do this:





7/18

Recording an Automated Test

In the following steps, we will record a keyword test. The

test will perform actions like opening the tested

application, opening the Order form, populating the form,

creating checkpoints, closing the form and closing the

application.

If TestComplete is not already running, launch it now.

Once it is running, select New | New Project from the

TestComplete File menu. This will call the Create New

Project wizard. In this wizard, specify the project’s name

and location. On the next pages of this wizard, you can

specify tested applications for your test, select the desired

scripting language and so on. However, we will close the

wizard now. We will specify tested applications later.

Click Finish to close the wizard. TestComplete will create

the project and display its contents in the Project Explorer

panel.

Right-click the TestedApps node in the Project

Explorer panel and choose Add | New Item from the

context menu. The Open File dialog will appear.

Select the Orders application executable in the

Add Tested Application dialog and click Open. You can

find the executable in the following folder:

\Open Applications\C#\bin\

Release\Orders.exe.





8/18

To record the test:

1. Select Record Keyword Test from TestComplete’s Test

Engine toolbar, or choose Test | Record | Record Keyword

Test from TestComplete’s main menu, or select Record NewTest from the toolbar of the KeywordTest Editor.

2. Add the “Launching the Orders application” comment to a

test. To do this:

Expand the Recording toolbar by clicking the Show

Additional Buttons item and click Add Comment to

Test on the Recording toolbar. This will invoke the Add

Comment to Test dialog:

Enter “Launching the Orders application” and click

Add.

3. Click Run Tested Application on the Recording toolbar and

add the “Opening the Order form” comment to a test as

described above.





9/18

4. Choose Orders | New order from the main menu of the

Orders application and add the “Populating the Order form”

comment to a test.

5. Enter the following values into the edit boxes of the Order

form:

6. Add the “Creating the checkpoint” comment to a test.

7. Perform the following actions to create a checkpoint for the

Total value:

Select Create Property Checkpoint from the

Recording toolbar. This calls the Create PropertyCheckpoint wizard.





10/18

On the Select Object page of the wizard, specify the

Total edit box of the Order form. After specifying this

edit box, TestComplete displays its name in the Object

field of the page, then click Next.

On the Select Property page, choose the Text property

from the list of the object’s properties and click Next.

On the Comparison Settings page, make sure that

the Equal condition is selected, then click Finish.

8. Add the “Closing the Order form” comment to a test and

click OK on the Order window to close the Order form and

add new record to the Orders application.





11/18

9. Add the “Closing the Orders application” comment to a test

and close the orders application and click No on the

Confirmation window to close the application without

changes, then click Stop on the Recording toolbar.

The recorded test looks like this:

Modifying the Data-Driven Test

Now we will modify the recorded data-driven test to make it

use data stored in an external Excel file. The test will iterate

through the rows of the specified file, each time accessing onerow of the DB Table variable and then using that stored data

to populate the Order form’s fields.

You can create the DB Table variable on the Variables edit

page of the KeywordTest editor manually or add this variable

to the test automatically while creating a data loop.





12/18

We will create a data-driven loop including the operations

between the RunTestedApp operation and the operation that

closes the Orders application.

To do this:

Select the specified operations in

the Keyword Test editon and right-

click them.The editor’s context-

menu will appear.

Select Make Data Loop from the

ensuing context menu item. The

Data-Driven Loop wizard will ap-

pear.

On the first page of the wizard, select Create New

Variable, type STET in the edit box and click Next.

On the next page of the wizard select Excel

Worksheet from the ensuing table and click Next.

Now, specify the path to the TestBook.xlsx file that is

located in the\Data-Driven

Testing folder. You can enterthe file path and

name, or click the ellipsis button and select the file inthe subsequent Open File dialog. After you’ve specified

the file, click Next.

Select TestSheet from the ensuing table and click Next.

Specify the database records to process. We will need

to process all of the records, so, click Next.





13/18

On the next page of the wizard, you can change the

parameters that are used by the selected operations.

In our example, we need to assign the values that are

stored in the Excel file to some of the selected

operations. To do this:Select ProductNames ClickItem | Param1

parameter. Click the corresponding Value cell

and choose DBTable1 -> Product from

the drop-down list.

Similarly, you can specify new values for other

parameters: Quantity, Date and so on.

Click Finish.

TestComplete then adds the Data-Driven Loop operation to

the keyword- driven test, and all the selected operations will be

moved as its child operations.

Also, the selected operations now have the new parameter

values that are specified through the DBTable1 variable. You

can see this in the picture:





14/18

Changing out Operations Based on Data

Note that in the test described above the Master Card option

button is always selected. However, you may want your test

to select the card type against the Credit Card column of theTestBook.xlsx file. In this case you will have to specify the

conditions for this manually. For example, you can do it using

the If … Then operation. To demonstrate this approach, we’ll

change the keyword-driven test in the following way:

delete the MasterCard.ClickButton operation and insert the

segment below:





15/18

Executing a Data-Driven Test and Checking Results

Now we will run the data-driven test. TestComplete opens the

tested application and adds new records until there is no more

data in the TestBook sheet. After the data-driven test is over,

you can find the test results in the Test Log.





16/18

If the output value had not matched the appropriate verifying

value, “The property value does not equal the template value”

error messages would have been posted into the log. This

indicates that the application works incorrectly. In this case,

the values should be revised. You can include any informationyou need in error messages. For instance, you can specify the

values of all input parameters that were used when the

error occurred.

The ability to report, analyze and communicate the results of

a test is critical for any tester, particularly when using complex

data-driven tests. TestComplete makes this easy by detailing

every action performed in the test, including screenshots of

these actions, and a summary report displaying a chart of

the test’s success/failure ratio. Additionally, it’s easy to email

reports as an attachment to other members – right out of Test-

Complete. Teams that use issue tracking systems such as Bug-

zilla, Ontime, Jira, TFS and QAComplete can take advantage ofthis integration, allowing bugs to be logged quickly and easily.





17/18

When implemented properly, data-driven testing is an effec-

tive method of extending your automated test coverage while

saving time. The process of taking randomly generated data,

iterating an automated test using this data and reporting

on the results helps you get more mileage out of our tests.Data-driven testing is a method that can be applied using a

variety of automated testing tools (or even to manual testing).

However, in order to supercharge your Data-Driven Testing, be

sure to use a tool that offers both data-generation capabilities

and robust reporting. If you’re interested in learning more, or

want to try your hand at data-driven testing, download a free

trial of TestComplete today.



http://www2.smartbear.com/TC-Free-Trials.htmlhttp://www2.smartbear.com/TC-Free-Trials.htmlhttp://smartbear.com/products/qa-tools/automated-testing-tools/http://smartbear.com/products/qa-tools/automated-testing-tools/http://smartbear.com/products/qa-tools/automated-testing-tools/http://smartbear.com/products/qa-tools/automated-testing-tools/http://smartbear.com/products/qa-tools/automated-testing-tools/http://www2.smartbear.com/TC-Free-Trials.htmlhttp://www2.smartbear.com/TC-Free-Trials.html


18/18

In short, TestComplete is an easy-to-use and affordable

testing tool that will turn your redundant software tests

into fast, reliable automated tests without proprietaryscripting.

Start a Free 30-Day

TestComplete Trial
http://www2.smartbear.com/TC-Free-Trials.htmlhttp://www2.smartbear.com/TC-Free-Trials.htmlhttp://www2.smartbear.com/TC-Free-Trials.htmlhttp://www2.smartbear.com/TC-Free-Trials.htmlhttp://smartbear.com/products/qa-tools/automated-testing-tools/http://www2.smartbear.com/TC-Free-Trials.htmlhttp://www2.smartbear.com/TC-Free-Trials.html

final data driven testing ebook

Documents