Verification Services |
The verification point framework provides for three types of verification points:
The following table summarizes the differences between verification point types:
Static verification points are regression-style tests -- in other words, the successful operation of the component-under-test is implicitly defined by the component's state during an earlier running of the test script, when the captured data was known to be correct.
With static verification points, the expected data object is captured during the first execution of the test script and is saved in the datastore as the baseline for subsequent executions of the test script. The expected data remains persistent unless and until it is explicitly replaced with new expected data. (To insert new expected data, click File > Replace Baseline with Actual in the Grid Comparator.)
Each subsequent time the test script is run, an actual data object is captured from the component-under-test. The expected data object is retrieved from the datastore and compared with the actual data captured in the current test run. The results are logged automatically.
Dynamic verification points differ from static verification points in that, with dynamic verification points, you, the test script author, explicitly define the successful operation of the component-under-test, rather than implicitly defining it by a previous state of the component-under-test.
With dynamic verification points, the expected data object is passed to the verification point at test runtime. The expected data object is not retrieved from the datastore after having been captured in an earlier execution of the test script, nor is it managed in any way by the verification point framework, as is the case with static verification points.
How the expected data is passed to a verification point is up to you as the author of the test script. For example, you might hard-code the data into the script, supply the data through a datapool, or read the data from a Java properties file.
When a dynamic verification point is executed, the expected data object is passed as a parameter to the verification point's performTest()
method. The verification point then captures the actual data object from the component-under-test, compares the expected and actual data objects, and automatically logs the results.
With manual verification points, both the expected and actual data objects are passed to the verification point's performTest()
method at test runtime. Expected and actual data objects are not provided by the verification point framework, as is the case with static verification points (where the framework provides both expected and actual data objects) and dynamic verification points (where the framework provides actual data objects only).
In other words, with manual verification points, you as the test designer are responsible for providing both the expected and the actual data objects. This frees you from relying on the framework's VerificationPointDataProvider
class to construct objects, allowing you to construct your own objects. The framework simply compares the data objects you provide and logs the results.
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