8.
Reporting
. The tool must provide a number of standard reports and allow users to generate their
own. See section 8.18 in Chapter 8.
9.
Document storage
. The tool should function as a central repository for all test documents.
10.
Interface
to test creation toolset.
11.
Import, and export facilities
to enable requirements, test scripts, and documents to be imported,
exported, and attached in XML.
Several such environments exist both commercially and as shareware.
7.4 Test Automation
Test automation is the development of tests, usually using scripts or special script-generating tools, to
simulate user actions on a GUI. This simulation can either test all the features of a GUI using a simulated
single user or simulate the behavior of thousands of users executing similar actions in a short time frame
in order to test the performance not of the GUI but of the rest of the system when under a load.
7.4.1 Why We Should Automate Our Tests
Here are some reasons:
??? Some manual tests take a long time to run: if they concern stable features they can be automated.
??? End-to end load and performance tests cannot be run without some automation.
??? Smoke and confidence tests need to be run fast, possibly overnight, so as to be able to reject a
release speedily if it is no good: developers need to know fast if there are problems in a release.
With big (> 100 KLOC) systems only automated testing can do this.
??? Tests on a large number of configurations need to have a repeatable component to give an early
warning of incompatibility.
Pages:
234
235
236
237
238
239
240
241
242
243
244
245
246
247
248
249
250
251
252
253
254
255
256
257
258