Beautiful Testing

Automated Tests and Test Case Management

As the number of test cases grows from hundreds to millions, test case management becomes a critical element of the overall system. In order to track what every test is doing and which tests are passing and failing, all tests need an associated unique identification number. At the very least, assigning test ID numbers enables tracking of test results across a number of testing configurations and scenarios, but it can also enable tracing of requirements or user stories to the tests that verify these requirements or stories.

Unique IDs assigned to individual test cases are a minimum requirement, but implementing a larger set of attributes associated with the test enables a much larger set of functionality.

Table 8-1 shows a small excerpt of test case IDs and samples of associated attributes in a test case management system.

Table 8-1. Example test case management identification attributes

Test case ID	Test binary or script	Command line	Configurations	Tags
10001	perfTest.dll	/entry:perfTestOne	All	Performance; Core
10002	perfTest.dll	/entry:perfTestTwo	Main	Performance
11001	scenarioTest.exe	/Persona:Peggy	Main	Scenarios
11002	scenarioTest.exe	/Persona:Carl	Mobile	Scenarios
12001	Applications.js		All	Applications
13002	filesysBVT.dll	/entry:createFileTests /full	Main	FileSystem; BVT
13023	filesysBVT.dll	/entry:usbStorageTests	USBStorage	FileSystem; BVT; USB

A brief explanation of the fields in Table 8-1 follow:

Test case ID

This is a globally unique identifier assigned to each test. It’s ...