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Simple Test Framework

Written by Thomas Beale.

• Targets ISE Eiffel 4.2 on Windows NT 4.0.
• 24 April 1998.
• Version 1.0.
• Copyrighted freeware.

ef_test.zip (18,738 bytes) - source code

SIMPLE TEST FRAMEWORK TO SUPPORT IEEE-style TESTING

Philosophy

The testing philosophy used is based on that described in the IEEE Standard for Software Test Documentation, IEEE 829-1983. Briefly this is as follows:

• Testing consists of a Test Plan, test design, and test result reporting.
• A Test Plan specifies a number of Test Cases (TCs), which are usually executed according to a Test Procedure.
• The test results are then the list of Pass/Fail results from the test cases, run according to the procedures.

Design

This simple package supports the above concepts as follows:

• A framework application TEST_APPLICATION is inherited by any application requiring test capability; it provides a console window menu-driven interface to TEST_SUITEs and TEST_CASEs.
• Test Cases are implemented with descendants of the TEST_CASE class, and are grouped under descendants of the TEST_SUITE class. All TEST_CASEs and the TEST_SUITE of a given suite typically inherit from a TEST_ENV descendant class, which contains common test data sets, procedures and utilities, thus corresponding to the Test Procedure idea.
• Each TEST_CASE descendant must implement the execute function, and can optionally implement the check_result function. The check_result function is called after 'execute' and determines if the test passed or failed. In case of failure, it calls ERROR_STATUS.set_fail_reason to say why. This sets the 'failed' status of the test case.
• If the "all" option of the test application is chosen, all TEST_CASEs of all TEST_SUITEs are executed, with the results
  being written into result files. The default result file path is currently hard-wired into TEST_APPLICATION, and may be overridden using the command line option "/d result_dir".

Example Distribution

The example provided should compile normally, requiring only the BASE libraries. Test cases included are contrived and simple, due to the fact that real examples of use involve the copyright code and systems of various organisations, not available for distribution, or else, more esoteric libraries such as Eiffel/Matisse.

Directory/Cluster Structure

One of the advantages of using this framework is that it encourages some discipline in testing, namely:

• each test case coded as one class
• test cases kept in known clusters, typically "cluster_x/test" where "cluster_x" contains the classes under test.
• test application always available as one of the final delivered applications to be executed at any time, including each time a change is made to any cluster, in the maintenance period.

To this end, a convenient directory structure I often use on projects is:

some_root_dir/
	app_1/
	app_2/
	app_3/
	library/
		cluster_a/
			test/
		cluster_b/
			test/
		cluster_c/
			test/
	test_app_A/
	test_app_B/

Here, the test_app_Xs are seen as ordinary deliverable applications; each cluster_x has its own set of test cases, test suite and test environment in cluster_x/test (i.e. the test cases etc travel with the relevant cluster).

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