Migration of Test Scripts into a New Release

Question

Hi,

Overview

Our company's current system test cycle involves the use of word documents for the UI test scripts and test execution log.

For each new release, these documents are copied from the previous release and then modified to reflect the current release version together with new test steps where there are changes in functionality.

Problem

Firstly, this is time-consuming - editing each word document (around 150 docs) just to make minor changes. Secondly, mistakes may occur as this process is manual.

Question

If I were able to port the test scripts into some data store (eg. sql server, xml file), would it be relatively straightforward to generate the word (or rtf, but not pdf) documents (using a word template with custom fields perhaps) based on this data set.

The kind of automated actions would consist of:

For the test script document:

1. Assign the release number
2. Set the description of the test
3. Create a ms word table that contained a line for each test step

For the execution log document:

1. Assign the release number
2. Set the description of the test
3. Create an empty ms word table that contained a line for each of the test steps. This would then be completed by the test executor.

Some pointers and maybe samples on the approach and technology to use would really be appreciated. Any solution that could be coded up (using itext perhaps?) would ideally used .net technology.

Thanks.

Answer 1

You probably should use the Word COM API; it's accessible from .NET and it will probably be the easiest way to generate Word documents.

Answer 2

Have a look at TestLink - it gives you a nice way to organize your test documents and easily set up new release test plans using existing test cases.