Effective Software Test Automation: Developing an Automated Software Testing Tool

"If you'd like a glimpse at how the next generation is going to program, this book is a good place to start."
—Gregory V. Wilson, Dr. Dobbs Journal (October 2004)

Build Your Own Automated Software Testing Tool

Whatever its claims, commercially available testing software is not automatic. Configuring it to test your product is almost as time-consuming and error-prone as purely manual testing.

There is an alternative that makes both engineering and economic sense: building your own, truly automatic tool. Inside, you'll learn a repeatable, step-by-step approach, suitable for virtually any development environment. Code-intensive examples support the book's instruction, which includes these key topics:

• Conducting active software testing without capture/replay
• Generating a script to test all members of one class without reverse-engineering
• Using XML to store previously designed testing cases
• Automatically generating testing data
• Combining Reflection and CodeDom to write test scripts focused on high-risk areas
• Generating test scripts from external data sources
• Using real and complete objects for integration testing
• Modifying your tool to test third-party software components
• Testing your testing tool

Effective Software Test Automation goes well beyond the building of your own testing tool: it also provides expert guidance on deploying it in ways that let you reap the greatest benefits: earlier detection of coding errors, a smoother, swifter development process, and final software that is as bug-free as possible. Written for programmers, testers, designers, and managers, it will improve the way your team works and the quality of its products.

Kanglin Li is a software engineer responsible for software development, testing, and deployment at Communication Data Services. He has developed applications in Basic, Pascal, C++, Java, Visual Basic, and C#. Li taught at North Carolina A&T State University as an assistant professor and is the author of 14 journal articles and technical papers. He has a B.S degree in Agronomy, an M.S. degree in computer science, and a Ph.D. degree in soil physics and statistics.