Article by Cem Kaner
What’s the Problem?
There are many pitfalls in automated regression testing. I list a few here. James Bach (one of the LAWST participants) lists plenty of others, in his paper “Test Automation Snake Oil.” [3]
Problems with the basic paradigm:
Here is the basic paradigm for GUI-based automated regression testing: [4]
1. Design a test case, then run it.
2. If the program fails the test, write a bug report. Start over after the bug is fixed.
3. If the program passes the test, automate it. Run the test again (either from a script or with the aid of a capture utility). Capture the screen output at the end of the test. Save the test case and the output.
4. Next time, run the test case and compare its output to the saved output. If the outputs match, the program passes the test.
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