Software QA FYI - SQAFYI

TestTalk: A Comprehensive Testing Language

By: Chang Liu

Abstract Software tests are intellectual assets that are as valuable as source code. Over the long term, maintainable software tests significantly lower a project's cost. It is very difficult, however, to write maintainable software tests, especially executable ones. Existing approaches - including natural languages, tabular formats, scripting and programming languages, and several test description languages - are all problematic, as briefly discussed in this paper. The solution we propose is TestTalk, a test description language that provides mechanisms to specify software tests while separating the various concerns of automated software testing. TestTalk is designed for testers. Software testing concepts such as application states, scenarios, boundary-based test input selection, and category-based test input selection, are explicitly supported by TestTalk. TestTalk tests are automated by a transformational approach.

The Problem
To develop high-quality software products, software teams invest significant portions of their resources on designing, implementing, and sometimes automating software tests. It is desirable but difficult to extend the life spans of these software tests. Changes in application implementation, platforms, or testing environments can all cause existing software tests to become invalid.

Software tests are traditionally described in natural languages, tabular formats, scripting or programming languages; each approach presents problems. Tests in natural languages or tabular formats are difficult to automate. Tests in general purpose scripting or programming languages are automated but sensitive to application implementation changes, especially user interface changes [2]. They are also difficult to port to other platforms. Tests in special scripting languages provided by testing tools are usually tied to testing tools and usually can not be used in other testing tools.

The root of the problem is that software test design and implementation is mixed with software test automation. The final software test description has not only description of what the test is but also inseparable automation details. The inseparable automation detail part causes all kinds of maintenance problems.

Our Solution: TestTalk

Overview
To solve the software test description problem, we designed a comprehensive testing language, called TestTalk [1]. TestTalk is a platform- and testing tool-independent language that allows testers to specify software tests in domain-specific terms. Tests are described only in terms of what they do, not how they are automated. Automating TestTalk tests is dealt with in a separation section using transformation rules. The benefit of this separation is that later change in platforms or testing tools will not force test descriptions to change.

When using TestTalk, testers still have full access to the underlying testing automation tool. They can even work in the same fashion. They switch to TestTalk only when they need access to TestTalk functionality. In this sense, TestTalk is a big plus with little negative impact.

Design goals
Our goal is to let TestTalk tests live as long as their applications. No matter what application implementation change, platform change, or testing environment change happens, as long as what a test does does not change, its test description should not need any modification. We want to provide language mechanisms to facilitate changes so that individual test descriptions do not need modifications. When changes are inevitable, for example, when application requirement changes, we want test descriptions to be easier to change. In other words, we want better maintainability of test descriptions. Our approach is to separate test design and test automation and to enable testers to describe software tests in terms of what the tests do, not in terms of how to automate them. All platform-, application implementation-, and testing environment-dependent parts of a software test are described in separate sections other than test case description sections.

In preparation for designing TestTalk, we conducted a survey on software test description techniques [3]. We discovered that the most expressive techniques are the most popular. To make TestTalk acceptable by all testers, we tried to ensure expressiveness of TestTalk by allowing testers to define their own TestTalk dialects, including native support for software testing concepts, and not imposing any constraints on underlying testing tools. Concepts in software testing, such as application states, boundary-based testing, test input categories and sampling, are explicitly supported by various TestTalk language mechanisms. TestTalk is a software test description language. It does not provide test automation by itself. TestTalk works with other testing tools to perform automated testing. We have been careful to not impose any constraints on the power of the underlying testing tools. All features of the underlying testing tools remain accessible when TestTalk is used.

Testers who work on test automation usually pick a testing tool and often become used to it. To increase their acceptance of TestTalk, we want to minimize changes in testers' work style should they decide to adopt TestTalk. For this purpose, we introduced several mechanisms to allow testers to work in their own styles. These mechanisms will be introduced in the following sections.

Key features
A TestTalk description consists of several sections. Major sections are setting sections, dialect sections, test scenario or action list sections, test suite sections, transformation rule set sections, and variable sections. Setting sections and transformation rule set sections contain all non-portable information. Setting sections have platform- or testing tool-specific parameters. Transformation rule sets define how actions are implemented on a particular platform with a particular testing tool. Test scenario or action list sections and test suite sections have individual test descriptions that are portable and maintainable. Dialect sections define dialects that can be used to define test scenarios and test cases. Variable sections define how different test variables can vary in which directions. This information helps test case generation. The following sections have examples for several key features of TestTalk. A secure web browser will be used as an example application-under-test to illustrate the language features. The secure web browser maintains a user profile for each user. Users store certificates in their user profiles. A certificate contains a pair of public/private key that can be used to authenticate the user to a web site. Dialects allow test descriptions in domain-specific terms

TestTalk users can choose a set of terms that are most suitable to their application domains and describe software tests in these terms. For example, to test the secure web browser, a tester can define her own dialect for this particular application. As shown in Figure 1, this dialect has four words: CreateProfile, OpenSecureSite, DeleteProfile, and ImportCert. Usages of these four words are also defined in the Dialect section. For example, word CreateProfile always takes one parameter, which is a profile name. With this dialect, the tester can then write her test scenarios in this dialect. One simple scenario is shown in Figure 1. As we can tell from this example, the scenario is very readable. The fact that dialects are defined in the context of application domains ensures readable test descriptions.

Full article...


Other Resource

... to read more articles, visit http://sqa.fyicenter.com/art/

TestTalk: A Comprehensive Testing Language