Tool support for testing
- 1. Taufik Hidayat Information System Department Faculty of Science and Technology State Islamic University of Sultan Syarif Kasim Riau (UIN SUSKA RIAU) http://sif.uin-suska.ac.id/ http://fst.uin-suska.ac.id/ http://www.uin-suska.ac.id/ Tool support for testing
- 2. TYPES OF TEST TOOL 1. Test tool classification The tools are grouped by the testing activities or areas that are supported by a set of tools, for example, tools that support management activities, tools to support st atic testing, etc. . There is not necessarily a one-to-one relationship between a type of tool describe d here and a tool offered by a commercial tool vendor or an open-source tool. So me tools perform a very specific and limited function (sometimes called a 'point so lution'), but many of the commercial tools provide support for a number of different functions (tool suites or families of tools). For example a 'test management' tool m ay provide support for managing testing (progress monitoring), configuration man agement of testware, incident management, and requirements management and t raceability; another tool may provide both coverage measurement and test design support.
- 3. TYPES OF TEST TOOL 2. Tool support for management of testing and tests What does 'test management' mean? It could be 'the management of tests' or it c ould be 'managing the testing process'. The tools in this broad category provide s upport for either or both of these. The management of testing applies over the wh ole of the software development life cycle, so a test management tool could be a mong the first to be used in a project. A test management tool may also manage t he tests, which would begin early in the project and would then continue to be use d throughout the project and also after the system had been released. In practice, test management tools are typically used by special- ist testers or test managers at system or acceptance test level.
- 4. TYPES OF TEST TOOL 3. Tool support for static testing The value of different types of review was discussed in Chapter 3. For a very infor mal review, where one person looks at another's document and gives a few com ments about it, a tool such as this might just get in the way. However, when the re view process is more formal, when many people are involved, or when the people involved are in different geographical locations, then tool support becomes far mo re beneficial.
- 5. TYPES OF TEST TOOL 4. Tool support for test specification Test design tools help to construct test cases, or at least test inputs (which is part of a test case). If an automated oracle is available, then the tool can also con- struct the expected result, so it can actually generate test cases (rather than just test inputs). For example, if the requirements are kept in a requirements management or test management tool, or in a Computer Aided Software Engineering (CASE) tool use d by developers, then it is possible to identify the input fields, including the range of valid values. This range information can be used to identify bound- ary values a nd equivalence partitions. If the valid range is stored, the tool can distinguish betw een values that should be accepted and those that should gen- erate an error me ssage. If the error messages are stored, then the expected result can be checked in detail. If the expected result of the input of a valid value is known, then that exp ected result can also be included in the test case constructed by the test design tool.
- 6. TYPES OF TEST TOOL 5. Tool support for test execution and logging When people think of a 'testing tool', it is usually a test execution tool that they h ave in mind, a tool that can run tests. This type of tool is also referred to as a 'test running tool'. Most tools of this type offer a way to get started by capturing or reco rding manual tests; hence they are also known as 'capture/playback' tools, 'capt ure/replay' tools or 'record/playback' tools. The analogy is with recording a televisi on program, and playing it back. However, the tests are not something which is pl ayed back just for someone to watch the tests interact with the system, which ma y react slightly differently when the tests are repeated. Hence cap- tured tests are not suitable if you want to achieve long-term success with a test execution tool, as is described in Section 6.2.3.
- 7. TYPES OF TEST TOOL 6. Tool support for performance and monitoring Dynamic analysis tools are 'dynamic' because they require the code to be runni ng. They are 'analysis' rather than 'testing' tools because they analyze what is hap pening 'behind the scenes' while the software is running (whether being executed with test cases or being used in operation). An analogy with a car may be useful here. If you go to look at a car to buy, you mi ght sit in it to see if is comfortable and see what sound the doors make - this woul d be static analysis because the car is not being driven. If you take a test drive, th en you would check that the car performs as you expect (e.g. turns right when yo u turn the steering wheel clockwise) - this would be a test. While the car is runnin g, if you were to check the oil pressure or the brake fluid, this would be dynamic a naly- sis - it can only be done while the engine is running, but it isn't a test case.
- 8. TYPES OF TEST TOOL 7. Tool support for specific application areas (Kl) In this chapter, we have described tools according to their general functional class ifications. There are also further specializations of tools within these clas- sificatio ns. For example there are web-based performance-testing tools as well as perfor mance-testing tools for back-office systems. There are static analysis tools for sp ecific development platforms and programming languages, since each programmi ng language and every platform has distinct characteristics. There are dynamic a nalysis tools that focus on security issues, as well as dynamic analysis tools for e mbedded systems. Commercial tool sets may be bundled for specific application areas such as web- based or embedded systems.
- 9. TYPES OF TEST TOOL 8. Tool support using other tools The tools described in this chapter are not the only tools that a tester can make u se of. You may not normally think of a word processor or a spreadsheet as a testi ng tool, but they are often used to store test designs, test scripts or test data. Test ers may also use SQL to set up and query databases containing test data. Tools u sed by developers when debugging, to help localize defects and check their fixes , are also testing tools. Developers use debugging tools when identifying and fixing defects. The debug ging tools enable them to run individual and localized tests to ensure that they ha ve correctly identified the cause of a defect and to confirm that their change to the code will indeed fix the defect. It is a good idea to look at any type of tool available to you for ways it could be us ed to help support any of the testing activities. For example, testers can use Perl scripts to help compare test results.
- 10. Graham, Dorothy, et al. “Foundation of Software Testing ISTQB Certification”. Chapter 6 tool support for testing. 2011 Reference