A Breakthrough in Empowering Equipment Testers

As the high-tech industry produces more complex equipment under the pressures of shorter release cycles, QA professionals face a growing demand for greater test coverage while looking at less time to do it. One can easily imagine then, under these circumstances, how difficult it is to get around to being proactive about test automation.

Some have turned to scripting to save time, but find that instead of increasing test coverage, they now spend their time in development and maintenance. Others stick to manual testing so that they can concentrate on creative testing rather than learning complex scripting languages. Unfortunately, neither approach does anything to address the growing backlog of test cases.

An automated solution

What is clearly needed is a tool that does not require additional set up time or specialized scripting skills — yet still allows for the same interactivity of manual testing. The good news: such an automated tool is now available in FanfareSVT.

Testers can use FanfareSVT to define and execute test cases in all the usual categories: functional, stress, load, performance, scenario, etc. To define the test case, testers perform exactly the same actions they would for a manual test—for example, manually logging into console ports or telnet sessions and sending commands to configure multiple devices. Sometimes called "record/replay," this approach accelerates the creation of an automated test case because it requires no actions other than those required for a manual test. The test can drive a traffic generator, to generate and analyze traffic, and send additional commands to the devices to determine if they reacted in the expected fashion. Then, for organizations who need to leverage an existing investment in Tcl scripting, with the click of a button the test case can be rendered as a Tcl script.

Benefits of this approach include:

The test case is quickly generated because the steps are captured automatically
Testers can immediately replay the command sequence, saving time during test development
The QA team acquires thorough, accurate documentation of the test case and results

The breakthrough: marrying the test case document and script

Even though the Fanfare's record/replay approach offers significant benefits, the real technical breakthrough is enabling the test case document and the automated test script to be one and the same. Immediately after testing a feature, the tester has an executable version of the test that can be used in an automated regression testing system. No scripting is required.

How does the breakthrough change testing processes for high-tech equipment? Tests are rarely perfect the first time they are executed. With traditional scripting, editing is so time-consuming that testers often do not have the luxury to make their tests modular and portable With FanfareSVT, in contrast, editing the test case document is easy, empowering testers to iteratively edit and execute until the tests are consistent and reliable—for the current release as well as for future regression testing.