QW2001 Paper 9T1

Mr. Greg Berger
(Lawson Software)

Creating A Tool-Independent Test Environment

Key Points

Presentation Abstract

Our company has gone through many growing pains, starting from manual testing to automating much of the testing. In our situation, we had built up a regression base of client/server tests using a 3rd party test tool when our focus expanded to web testing. We now had to add another test tool for the web portion of our testing, while continuing to support our client/server testing. In order to accomplish this, we developed a testing environment that is tool independent.

With this idea in mind, we integrated many types of technologies and used as much of the Object-oriented programming techniques as possible. At present, we have common code that will run using Rational Robot and Mercury Interactive's WinRunner. We have implemented a VB ActiveX library and a C DLL for this purpose. We have also written our scripts/code in such a way that we have been able to isolate test tool specific calls (interface layer). We have written much of our functionality using objects and encapsulation.

Our final goal was to create a test environment that could use common code and functionality across several test tools and not be tied to a specific test tool. This has allowed us to use the strengths of each test tool and not have to re-develop those functionalities. The end result should give us flexibility to change, allow us to use our regression base in many other ways and cut our testing costs.

The talk discusses

* Present ways companies use automated test tools and how their test regression bases are being built up
* Problems and concerns that need to be addressed with developing tests using the current methods
* Solutions to minimize the impact of changes to the test tool or applications under test
* Solutions to make your test environment more independent of a specific test tool
* Advantages to using the new test development methods

About the Author

Greg Berger is a Senior Systems Quality Engineer at Lawson Software (www.lawson.com) with responsibility for functional testing and test architectural design/implementation. Greg has been in the software test area for seventeen years, the last five of which using and developing in a wide variety of automated test tools, including Autotester, Mercury Interactive's WinRunner and Rational Robot.

Before Lawson, Greg worked in a variety of areas and technologies at companies such as Unisys and Pitney Bowes. Greg can be reached at greg.berger@lawson.com (651) 767-4061.