ICS 121: System Test Automation
Overview
- What is system test automation?
- Some popular system testing tools
- Tips on automated system testing
What is System Test Automation?
- System test automation is a way to automatically test an
entire software product.
- Two main approaches:
- Record and playback
- Programmatic testing
- Why use system test automation?
- Test the whole product as the user will see it, including any
bad interactions between components
- Automatation is better than manual: faster, more consistent, less tedious
Some popular system testing tools
- WinRunner:
record and playback GUI and Web application testing for MS Windows
- SilkTest:
record and playback GUI and Web application testing for MS Windows
- HttpUnit:
programmatic framework for automatically testing web applications,
similar to JUnit
Tips on automated system testing
- You still need to think through a QA plan and test suite.
- Automating ad hoc testing is still ad hoc and does
not give much assurance.
- You will want to be able to edit the test scripts to add
conditionals and loops.
- Test can be very brittle:
- Every change to the program could change the test steps or
expected output, thus forcing you to spend more time maintaining
automated tests
- Leave automated system test for the end of the develoment
cycle, focus on other QA activities until the UI is stable
example use case templatesample test plan templateProject plan template