There are many toolsets available for setting up an automated test framework. Choosing the right one and successfully establishing the framework is where the problems begin. Illume can work with you and guide you, keeping you from making costly mistakes, while ensuring that you achieve your objectives. Test automation success is more than just downloading the right tool.
In fact the framework is the easiest component. The writing of the unit and/or functional tests should not be underestimated.
Unit tests tackle your code from the inside-out. In other words they test methods and the branches (conditional statements) within them. The choice of test data is important to ensure that the unit tests invoke enough of the program code to allow you to evaluate its correctness.
Functional tests exercise the application code from the outside-in. If the application under test is web-based the tests will typically mimic use cases. For example login, logout, adding a User, subscribing to a newsletter or some other data available through the web-site.
Code coverage presents you with a picture depicting the lines of code touched by the Unit and Functional tests. By using instrumented byte code the Test Framework can produce separate coverage reports for each type of test suite and a consolidated one for the whole application under test.
Michael Bentley
