RE: QA Glossary

David Marston wrote:
A test document should embody one test case, and that 
ought to be an atomic test case, or at least molecular 
if atomic is not possible. I could digress about
real-world considerations for the test documents, but I won't (for now).

I'll go ahead.  I'd be extremely careful about how this is worded so that
you don't discourage tests that attempt to reach one particular state and
then make multiple assertions on query operations on that state.

For example, a text node in the DOM should have a nodeValue of 3, a nodeName
of "#text" and attributes should be null.  If you equate "atomic test" with
"only one assertion" and you strongly encourage atomic tests, then you would
end up with 3 times the number of tests needed than if you allowed multiple
queries and assertions after you reached the state under test.

A test should try to get a system to one particular state, but it is only
beneficial from a code maintenance and coverage perspective to make as many
observations and assertions at that final state as possible.

Received on Friday, 24 May 2002 15:23:36 UTC