Automated Application Testing
In a previous life I was the manager of system testing for a custom appliction. We were testing a pretty sophisticated software application. The team had a combination of developers and business analysts. The team ratio was 60% analysts and 40% developers. The analysts generated the tests necessary for the application using a word template providing one or more actions and expected results of each action. The developers created code implementing the defined tests.
One of the neat things that happened during this effort was the emergence of automated test recording tools. They were all pretty much the same regarding their capabilities. Key to them all was the ability to run a recorder that would track all the actions a user would take while exercising the application and translate those actions into a test. This was similar to recording a macro in Excel.
We quickly found that we were able to extend our throughput of application testing by allowing the business analysts to record their own tests. Later, developers would optimize the tests in different ways allowing them to be used as subroutines for different scenarios.
The net result of the team was the ability to fully test a release in a matter of minutes rather than days. Additionally, we used the routines to import data from other systems that were being replaced because it was easier to use an already tested system than reproduce much of the business logic that wasn’t exposed.
With the growth of the browser as a user interface container, system testing became somewhat more difficult. Still, there has been a lot of growth with the open source community, and products are beginning to mature enough to actually compete with their more costly competitors.
Are you executing automated tests in your Web Applications? I’ll be talking quite a bit about it this week. Send any comments you would like to add to this conversation to btaylor@sswug.org.
Cheers,
Ben
$$SWYNK$$
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