TestLink

Dear TestLink team,

we are looking from the point of view "automatic integration testing" on TestLink since we develop for several years an open source framework for integration tests (www.ivalidator.org). We would like to use TestLink to define test suites that are tested automatically.

From this point of view we propose some extensions on test case specification that we miss:

- A test case often consists of several test steps (as several examples show). This is not yet visible in the data structure and the screens. For test automation each test step needs different automation - so they should be distinguishable.

- Test steps are often reused in several test cases, e.g., logging in, entering some customer data, checking the result data. These steps should be named and reusable ("keyword-driven testing"), maybe using different parameters/data on each occurrence. Note that this concept is different from the keywords you assign to a test case - these allow not to reference a test case (or test step) from another test suite (or test case). A named test step can be mapped to an automatic test step (script, class/method, ...), depending on the test automation used.

- Test data is a central point in automatic testing. Test data should be entered separately from test suites, test cases, and test steps. Often test data is reused so it is a good idea to have named test data sets that may be referenced from different test suites/cases/steps. For each test step it should be possible to reference data needed for this step - and name data that this step creates when it is needed in another step (input/output data for each test step). Footnote: For automation we need a structured (parsable) data representation but that is beyond the scope of TestLink. This depends on the test automation used.

Regards,

Gerald
gerald@ivalidator.org

My input on test automation support.

Gerald,

I am with you on much of what you are requesting. I would like to have a way to manage test data withing TestLink. However, I would much prefer that TestLink not go in the direction of becoming a test automation execution tool.

Right now, the API allows people doing test automation to report test execution results into TestLink. What I would like to see is to add on to TestLink the ability to store test data to a test plan or something like that. (Assuming it's not already there and I've just missed it) Then add to the API a way to specify and retrieve which set of data to use for an automated test run. This would keep the management and execution of automated tests outside of TestLink but allow for a single place to store test data and execution results.

TestLink is a pretty cool yet young tool that needs some more functionality in its strongest areas of test case, test plan, test execution tracking and requirements management. If the development team were to change their focus from enhancing those key strengths and go off trying to create a feature set that is compatible with decent set of test automation tools then there is going to be some severe stagnation of other features.

I plan on in the future tying test automation into TestLink myself so I see the need but I'd rather be able to get full Requirements Tree functionality long before I'd like to be able to kick off automated tests from within the TestLink GUI.

MArk B.
P.S. Maybe if there was a way to associate files with Test Plans?