Personal Technology Information

Advantages and Guidelines of Automated Testing


"Automated Testing" is automating the manual testing process currently in use. This requires that a formalized "manual testing process", currently exists in the company or organization.

Automation is the use of strategies, tools and artifacts that augment or reduce the need of manual or human involvement or interaction in unskilled, repetitive or redundant tasks.

Minimally, such a process includes:

Detailed test cases, including predictable "expected results", which have been developed from Business Functional Specifications and Design documentation

A standalone Test Environment, including a Test Database that is restorable to a known constant, such that the test cases are able to be repeated each time there are modifications made to the application.

The following types of testing can be automated

Functional - testing that operations perform as expected.

Regression - testing that the behavior of the system has not changed.

Exception or Negative - forcing error conditions in the system.

Stress - determining the absolute capacities of the application and operational infrastructure.

Performance - providing assurance that the performance of the system will be adequate for both batch runs and online transactions in relation to business projections and requirements.

Load - determining the points at which the capacity and performance of the system become degraded to the situation that hardware or software upgrades would be required.

Benefits of Automated Testing

Reliable: Tests perform precisely the same operations each time they are run, thereby eliminating human error

Repeatable: You can test how the software reacts under repeated execution of the same operations.

Programmable: You can program sophisticated tests that bring out hidden information from the application.

Comprehensive: You can build a suite of tests that covers every feature in your application.

Reusable: You can reuse tests on different versions of an application, even if the user interface changes.

Better Quality Software: Because you can run more tests in less time with fewer resources

Fast: Automated Tools run tests significantly faster than human users.

Cost Reduction: As the number of resources for regression test are reduced.

Choosing the right tools for the job and targeting the right areas of the organization to deploy them can only realize these benefits. The right areas where the automation fit must be chosen.

The following areas must be automated first

1. Highly redundant tasks or scenarios

2. Repetitive tasks that are boring or tend to cause human error

3. Well-developed and well-understood use cases or scenarios first

4. Relatively stable areas of the application over volatile ones must be automated.

Automated testers must follow the following guidelines to get the benefits of automation:

? Concise: As simple as possible and no simpler.

? Self-Checking: Test reports its own results; needs no human interpretation.

? Repeatable: Test can be run many times in a row without human intervention.

? Robust: Test produces same result now and forever. Tests are not affected by changes in the external environment.

? Sufficient: Tests verify all the requirements of the software being tested.

? Necessary: Everything in each test contributes to the specification of desired behavior.

? Clear: Every statement is easy to understand.

? Efficient: Tests run in a reasonable amount of time.

? Specific: Each test failure points to a specific piece of broken functionality; unit test failures provide "defect triangulation".

? Independent: Each test can be run by itself or in a suite with an arbitrary set of other tests in any order.

? Maintainable: Tests should be easy to understand and modify and extend.

? Traceable: To and from the code it tests and to and from the requirements.

For more visualization of this article and free training tutorials on Testing: http://www.exforsys.com/content/category/17/259/340/

Exforsys offers free training and career help specializing in C, C++, C#, Java, J2EE, .NET, PeopleSoft, SAP, Siebel, Oracle Apps, Data warehousing, Oracle/SQL Server/DB2 and Testing. Please visit http://www.exforsys.com for more Training Tutorials, for IT Interview questions visit http://www.geekinterview.com, for articles and resources visit http://www.itquestionbank.com


MORE RESOURCES:

Personal Tech briefs: Apple releases flood of new games for iPhone
Salt Lake Tribune, United States - Jul 22, 2008
By Victor Godinez Gamers should be spending a lot of time on the new Apple iPhone 3G. In addition to familiar games like Tetris, sudoku and poker, ...


iYogi, your personal offshore tech support, raises $9.5 million to ...
VentureBeat, CA - 16 hours ago
iYogi, an Indian company that provides outsourced, personal tech support for $119 per year, has raised a $9.5 million second round of funding to undercut ...


Personal Tech Microsoft To Let Developers Sell Xbox 360 Games Online
Top Tech News, CA - Jul 22, 2008
By Barbara Ortutay The arrangement lets game makers pick a price tag between 200 and 800 "Microsoft Points" for their titles; 800 of these points are ...


Solutions: For your mailing lists, try Microsoft Access
Tampabay.com, FL - Jul 20, 2008
Send questions to personaltech@sptimes.com or Personal Tech, PO Box 1121, St. Petersburg, FL 33731. Questions are answered only in this column.


Personal Tech Twitter Took Off from Simple to 'Tweet' Success
CIO Today, CA - Jul 22, 2008
By Jefferson Graham "What are you doing?" is the question Twitter asks "Twitterers" to answer in a simple text message as they connect with friends, ...


Scientific American

Personal Tech Gaming Companies Mimic Each Other at E3
CIO Today, CA - Jul 18, 2008
By Derrik J. Lang While the Big Three gaming companies presented much more of the same, they also used E3 to show off completely different products. ...
Personal Tech Sony Tries To Move Beyond PlayStation Price Cut Top Tech News
all 1,405 news articles


Google Connects PCs To TVs With New Application
Post Chronicle - Jun 30, 2008
by Mitch Marconi Google has decided to take over your TV, they just took your seat on the couch and grabbed the remote to change the way you view ...


Datamation

Tips on Getting a Better IT Job
Datamation, CT - Jun 27, 2008
By James Maguire Okay, you’re an IT professional and you’re looking for a job (or a better job than the one you have). Which of the following is most likely ...


Apple Renews, But Doesn't Reinvent, the iPhone
Washington Post, United States - Jul 17, 2008
If you've got other questions about the iPhone--or any other personal-tech topics--I'll be online from 2 to 3 this afternoon for my usual Web chat. ...


Sampling the Best of the iPhone App Store’s Diversions
New York Times, United States - Jul 16, 2008
(Visit nytimes.com/personaltech for a slide show that shows you these and 10 other top picks.) BoxOffice (Free): BoxOffice takes advantage of the iPhone’s ...

Personal-Tech - Google News

home | site map
© 2006