Mumbai University > Information Technology > Sem 8 > Software Testing and Quality Assurance

Marks: 5M

Test suite is a container that has a set of tests which helps testers in executing and reporting the test execution status. It can take any of the three states namely Active, Inprogress and completed.

A Test case can be added to multiple test suites and test plans. After creating a test plan, test suites are created which in turn can have any number of tests.

Test suites are created based on the cycle or based on the scope. It can contain any type of tests, viz - functional or Non-Functional.

Test suite structure is an essential items of a system test plan

Test Suite Structure:

1. Detail test groups and subgroups are outlined in the test suite structure section based on the test categories identified in the test approach section.
2. Test objectives are created for each test group and subgroup based on the system requirements and functional specification.
3. If some existing test cases, automated or manual, need to be run as regression tests, those test cases must be included in the test suite.

If each test case represents a piece of a scenario, such as the elements that simulate a completing a transaction, use a test suite. For instance, a test suite might contain four test cases, each with a separate test script:

Test case 1: Login

Test case 2: Add New Products

Test case 3: Checkout

Test case 4: Logout

Test suites can identify gaps in a testing effort where the successful completion of one test case must occur before you begin the next test case. For instance, you cannot add new products to a shopping cart before you successfully log in to the application. When you run a test suite in sequential mode, you can choose to stop the suite execution if a single test case does not pass. Stopping the execution is useful if running a test case in a test suite depends on the success of previous test cases.

Test suites often need to adapt to the software that it is intended to test. The core software changes and grows, and as such, its test suite also needs to change and grow. However, the test suites can often grow so large as to be unmaintainable.

Maintaining the suite becomes too expensive. Once we have a suite in place, we have to maintain it. As the size of the suite grows, the amount of maintenance of existing test grows. It grows in proportion to the number of tests in the suite and the rate of change of the underlying software being tested. As the amount of maintenance grows, so does its expense.

We can developed techniques to assist in the maintenance of these test suites, specifically byn allowing for test-suite reduction (while preserving coverage adequacy) and test-suite prioritization.