An introduction to Data-Driven Testing in TestComplete

BANGALORE, INDIA: TestComplete offers considerable power and flexibility via its support for Data-Driven Testing. This tech paper will serve to do the following:

* Introduce the DDT concept.

* Give an overview of TestComplete’s support for DDT.

* Visit the DDT sample included with the TestComplete install.

Introducing Data-Driven Testing

In addition to its support for automation of unit, regression, distributed and other testing types, TestComplete offers support for traditional record -and-playback-style GUI and functional testing.

While certainly not a comprehensive method of testing on its own, recordable scripts represent an excellent starting place for creating more robust and complete test projects. One of the complaints leveled against traditional script playback-type automated testing is that it is inflexible and that the test cases are not easily extended.

To answer this argument, the Data-Driven Testing (DDT) methodology was born. Although this technique does not originate with TestComplete, it is a fairly straightforward concept and is easily implemented within TestComplete scripts.

The simplest explanation of DDT is this: data that is external to your functional test scripts is loaded and used to extend your test cases. One of the best examples is that of a customer order form. If you wished to populate the entry fields with multiple test cases without DDT, you would either need to record multiple test scripts (one for each different test case) or employ DDT.

To use DDT in this scenario, you might record a single script, entering values into the various fields. Then, you could alter the script to accept variables, entering those variables into the data fields. Now you can call this script each time you want to add an order record, passing in a new set of data each time. 

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