Introduction
The data-driven testing approach is a widely used methodology in software test automation. We can use the same test script to check different test conditions by passing set of data to the test script.
We will use the BMI calculator application as an example to understand the data-driven testing approach.
When testing whether the BMI calculator application indicates BMI categories correctly, instead of having a separate test script for each category, we can have one script that will enter the height and weight by referring to a set of values and checking the expected values.
We can use the following combinations of test conditions to test the BMI calculator application:
|
Height (centimeters) |
Weight (kilograms) |
BMI |
Category |
|---|---|---|---|
|
160 |
45 |
17.6 |
Underweight |
|
168 |
70 |
24.8 |
Normal |
|
181 |
89 |
27.2 |
Overweight |
|
178 |
100 |
31.6 |
Obesity |
In the simplest form, the tester supplies inputs from a row in the table and expected outputs, which occur in the same row.
