The Study Of XML-Based Test Case Reuse

Software testing is a very important means to assure the quality of software, and choosing a proper test case plays a vital role in the test. Designing a test case aims to test out certain function of that software by determining a data or datum that can find fault. However, because of designing a test case depends much on the personal experience of the tester, different testers compile out different test case compiling formats, which results in big blindness in the test and consequently great software maintaining expenses.Fortunately, reuse of available test cases solves the above problem which can avoid testers' lack of experience and decrease the repeated labor, thus improve software test effiency. As we know, a complete software test should experience a series of steps: unit testing, integrated testing, validation testing and system testing. After several tests, a great deal of valuable test cases come out But these test cases are describled in different formats, hence a unified and standard format for simplifying reuse of test cases is needed.XML (Extensible Markup Language) is a data description language standard formulated by 3WC(World Wide Web Consortium), which is characterized by its self-description, good data saving format, extensibility, high structuralization and seperated content and form. The key point is its extensibility by which the user can define his data property and lables freely, employ DTD (Document Type Definition) or XML Schema to describle the logical structure of XML schema and define the elements, property of elements and the relation between them. In order to improve software reuse capability, XML designs unified description framework standard,and it is a simple and useful format to transform structural information to text information.Regarding the above points, the dissertation makes a study on the software test cases reuse and put forward a method of XML-Based test case reuse. On the basis of much analysis of software test cases, the thesis points out the common characteristics of reusable test cases and general couse of establishing reusable test cases. Besides,some definitions and some rules must beobeyed in the designing reusable test cases are also introduced. And the analysis of XML is included in the analysis and study. After that, the essay put forward the general process of test case reuse and some reuse methods. Finally, the dissertation makes an exploration on application of test case reuse based on the study of XML case.