Using a Database to Automate and Manage Interdependent Functional Tests Across Multiple Platforms

摘要

Test Automation can be a complex and intimidating endeavor to attempt. This paper is about how a small team approached the problem and the solutions discovered along the way. The objective is to automate testing of financial like transactions across multiple platforms, leveraging the business users expertise about the application; using the tools available to us. In addition, test maintainability became a constraint we as a team put on ourselves as we had either experienced or heard horror stories about maintaining automated scripts once they were complete. This assignment became an adventure for the team as we encountered hidden requirements, constraints and issues along the way. The applications under test are complex due to many factors like multiple platforms and exponential number of combinations etc. We also discovered constraints relating to the compatibility of the test tools with the applications under test. As we learned more about the applications and the test tools themselves we began to realize additional requirements such as time to process the automated scripts.