Code-Based Automated Software Testing In Visual Basic

摘要

Software firms have struggled with implementation of software test automation for decades. Several commercial products have been developed to address this need with mixed results. Many firms have given up entirely on automated testing, returning to alpha manual testing coupled with beta and post-beta testing by customers. After evaluation of these options, the only practical approach for a small software manufacturer was to develop a custom “code-based” test automation method that utilized existing project architecture, Visual Basic code, object structure, and data dictionary. This automation method creates a clone of the project under test, adding several forms, modules, and classes to handle the test automation. The cloning process scans each code object associated with the project, and adds special controls and events as necessary to allow project forms to initialize and close automatically. These special controls also provide a callback to a special Visual Basic class to handle the activity and logging loop through form input sequences in the data dictionary. This approach eliminated many of the drawbacks associated with scripted automation tools that examine application executables through operating system hooks. This test process is dynamic, since the cloned test code can be destroyed and refreshed at any time. The cloning operation does not substantially disturb the base code, and the development staff did not require training or modification of standard coding practices. Test automation has been a major benefit to Bidtek, allowing the skilled manual testers to concentrate on high-level operations requiring human judgment release to release.