Testing of systems with many variants
The TestBench's variant management supports testing of systems with many variants. The special focus is on the comfortable and low-redundancy test specification for system variants that must be tested independently of each other, but share large parts of the test specification.
In variant management, a test object version is marked as a so-called base test object version, which then contains the common test specification of a product line. Test object versions for the individual products are then derived from this base test object version as variant versions, which then contain the test specifications for one of the products in the product line.
In the course of the variants management, the test object version will be marked as so-called base text object version which contains the joint test specification of a product line. From this base test object version, test object versions will be derived for the single products as variants versions which each contain the test specification for one of the product line products.
When deriving a variant, the number of tests will be adapted to the variants. For this, so-called variant markers are used which can be assigned to test themes, test sets and test cases. During derivation, these markers decide if one of these elements will be adopted in the variant or not.
In addition to the adaptation to the number, the parameter data will be adjusted to the variant in a second step. For this, so-called placeholders will be used which will be applied as representatives instead of normal representatives. For each variant it is necessary to define which value is assigned to the placeholder. When deriving the variant, this placeholder value will be entered in the placeholder.
After having carried out these two rules, a variant specific test object version was created from the variant across basic test object version.
For each base test object version, the following elements can be applied and edited in the variants management:
The section Variants Definition lists all variants which represent each derivation rules for a concrete test specification. The variants in the TestBench correspond to the (product) variants of the test object.
The Placeholders section describes a list of placeholders that can be used in the basic test object version instead of concrete representatives.
The Replacement Table area provides the link between variants and placeholders. It allows you to specify a concrete value for each placeholder in each variant.
After placeholders and variant definitions have been specified in variant management, the defined objects can be used in the specification of the base test object version.
The section Replacement Table connects the variants with the placeholders. This allows concrete values to be entered for each placeholder in each variant.
Once the placeholders and variants definitions in the variants management have been determined, the defined objects can be used in the specification of the base test object version.
For each variant in the base test object version a variants marker as special keyword will be available. These can be added to test sets and test cases in order to specify that the indicated element is only relevant for specific variants.
Placeholders can be created in data types instead of normal representatives. They are marked with a symbol as so-called placeholder representatives; they act as normal representatives within the base test object version.
Example:
Derivation of the variants "Vehicles" and " Spacecrafts" defined in the common test specification within the base test object version. In the generated variant " Spacecrafts" two test steps are removed, because they are marked as invalid in the base test object version for this variant.
In addition to the typical scenarios for variants in testing, such as mapping variants of a product line, variant management is also suitable for mapping internationalization and localization tests, since the specifics of a language, such as special characters or special names, can be compared very well.
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