Bill -
Years ago, while working at ADP Dealer Services, we were asked to
attempt the same thing. Your take on the scope of the project is
correct. It is a hugh project that requires some way to maintain the
scripts in sync with the code as well as to store the sets of
responses to enter. A top level team of ADP developers looked into
the project and concluded that it was not cost effective. Due to the
ever changing nature of the tests that are required for new apps and
feature changes, keeping the scripts in sync with the next version of
changes requires as much manpower as the manual testing.
A better strategy for serious testing is to develop a separate staff
that knows the application well and just is responsible for testing
and development of test plans (an art in of itself that programmers
are not very good at). I believe that this would offer a more cost
effective strategy and get your company better testing that unit
tests done by the programmers.
In some programming environments (other than MV), there are products
to do this kind of instrumented testing, but the only ones I ever
investigated cost more that our entire budget for the QC staff that
did our testing and a lot more at ADP.
Ken
At 12:57 PM 9/22/2009, you wrote:
My boss has a new grand scheme for software testing. To test each
program revision, he wants scripts to inject sample data into user apps
and then another (big) program looks at EVERYTHING that comes out,
comparing it to a baseline.
To me, the scope of this project is huge, perhaps bigger that our ERP
system. So far, I have been unable to talk him out of it.
Thus, I am wondering what other people are doing in the way of software
test. Virtually all of the source code that we have is in UniBasic.
I do not know what jargon to use to describe the test that I do now. On
a spreadsheet, I layout the various possiblities and then try each
scenario... One-by-one... Fixing bugs as I find them and then starting
the batch of tests from scratch.
--Bill
_______________________________________________
U2-Users mailing list
U2-Users@listserver.u2ug.org
http://listserver.u2ug.org/mailman/listinfo/u2-users
Ken Hall
www.old-scholls.com
mailto:k...@old-scholls.com
phone: 503-702-7841
_______________________________________________
U2-Users mailing list
U2-Users@listserver.u2ug.org
http://listserver.u2ug.org/mailman/listinfo/u2-users
