What is split action and the purpose of using this in QTP?

Well, here is another article that talks about what is meant by split action and what purpose does it has to serve in test automation using quick test professional. 

In quick test professional, after recording of an action it has to be split in to various parts. This is known as split action. 

In quick test professional two types of split actions have been provided as mentioned below:

1. Splits independent to each other and
2. Nested splits

- After the recording is complete, it is run and designed the option “keyboard view” is selected and the part to be highlighted is clicked. 

- After this the “split action” option is selected from the step menu for splitting the action. 

- Before you decide to split, you should always remember that once you split the action, it cannot be undone. 

- Your original recorded action will be lost and you won’t be able to recover it. - Therefore, to avoid such kind of situations it is important that the recorded action must be saved the very before splitting it. 

- Saving before splitting is always recommended.

- In some cases multiple split actions that are independent of each other can be obtained. 

- There are several advantages of split action:

1. With the actions tests can be divided in to business processes and logical units.
2. With actions quite a modular and efficient scripts can be created.
3. Multiple actions can be contained within a test script.

- The action that is stored in the test scripts that you recorded can be split either in to parent child nested actions or in to sibling actions. 

- Whenever you split an action the beginning of the other part of the action takes place from the step that was selected during the process of splitting the action. 

- You cannot split an action under following situations:

1. If you already have an external action in selection.
2. You have selected the first step of an action.
3. Some read only test is active.
4. Running a test
5. Recording of a test is in progress.

- Some tests make use of a local repository and so while splitting actions contained in such tests following things happen:

1. A copy of local repository is created by the quick test professional.
2. The two action splits are assigned the identical local object repositories. Such local repositories consist of all the objects that were present in the original local object repository.
3. If the objects are added to only one of the split actions, those objects are added to the local object repository of that action only.

- To split an action you need to select the particular step before which according to you lies the starting of the second action. 

- Now, go to the edit menu, the action, and then to split action. 

- Up on clicking on this option you get a split action dialog box. 

- Select the type of actions you want to have i.e., independent or nested. 

- Here, you can also modify the names and description of the two actions in their respective names and description boxes. 

- One important point that you should always take care of is that if you call a reusable action through another test, splitting such an action will cause the test to fail.

Basic purpose of Split Action

- The basic purpose the split action serves is that it makes the application reusable. 

- The reusability is increased since the actions are divided based up on their functionality. 

- Another point is that calling an action is same as asking to execute it and only reusable functions can be called. 

What are the causes for the failure of traditional planning approach?

The traditional planning approaches does not always lead to very satisfactory results.

Causes for Planning Failure

Cause #1: Planning is done by activity and not feature
- The traditional approaches to planning focus on activity completion rather than on delivery of features.
- Activity based plans generally lead to projects that overrun their schedules.
- Hence, quality is reduced.

Cause #2: Activities do not finish early
Cause #3: Lateness is passed down the schedule
- Traditional approaches being activity based, their main focus is to focus on dependencies between activities.
- Testing will start late if anything goes worse than planned according to traditional approach.
- Testing will start early if everything goes better than planned.

Ways to avoid late start of testing are:
1. User interface coding finishes late.
2. Middle tier coding takes longer than planned and finishes late.
3. Middle tier coding starts late as tables adding to database finishes late.
4. Tester is not available.

Cause #4: Activities are not independent
- Activities are independent if duration of one activity does not influence the duration of another activity.
- For independent activities, late finish on one activity can be offset by an early finish on another.


Cause #5: Delay caused by multitasking
- Multitasking exacts a horrible toll on productivity.
- It becomes an issue once a project starts to have some activities that finish late.
- Dependencies between activities become critical.
- For a traditionally planned project, multitasking becomes a problem for two reasons:
1. Work is assigned in advance and it is impossible to allocate work efficiently in advance.
2. It focuses on achieving high level of utilization of all individuals rather than on maintaining sufficient slack.

Cause #6: Features are not developed by priority
Cause #7: Ignoring Uncertainty
- We fail to acknowledge uncertainty in traditional approach.
- Ignore the uncertainty about product.
- Assuming initial requirement analysis will lead to complete specification of product.
- Ignoring uncertainty about how we will build the product.
- The best way to deal with uncertainty is to iterate.


After looking at the problems with traditional approaches to planning, many projects are disappointing. Planning based on activity diverts us from features and as a result, a variety of problems leads to the likelihood of delivering late against a schedule.

Explain concatenated loops in detail?

Loops as we all know are quite an essential programming constructs in the program that involve solving the complex problems with the repetition of the simple statements. With the loops it has been possible to reduce the drudgery of the programmers and developers of writing the same code again and again innumerable number of times. Everyone is familiar with the three types of loops namely:

   (i)  For loop

   (ii) While loop and lastly

   (iii) The do while loop

Based up on the structure of the loops, they have been categorized as mentioned below:

   (i)  Structured loops and

   (ii) The unstructured loops

There are various kinds of other loops like the nested loops and simple loops. Yet there is one more kind of loops that we are going to discuss in this article namely “the concatenated loops”. Before going to the discussion regarding the concatenated loops let us clear up with the meaning of the concatenation. 

What is meant by Concatenation and Concatenated Loops

- To concatenate means to join two things mostly statements or words or strings together end by end to make them in to one single statement, word or string respectively as the case may be. 

- Concatenated loops are the loops that occur in following to the preceding loop in the code of the program.

- The execution of the next loop begins only after the termination of the previous loop. 

- Concatenated loops are usually found to be the independent loops since the number of times they have to be iterated does not depends on the iterations of any other loop.

- They are treated normally as the other simple loops in the sequence.

Guidelines for testing concatenated loops

For testing these loops separate guidelines are followed rather than the simple loops.

- For the first and the last loop in the concatenated sequence, simple loop tests are conducted at the minimum possible values. 

- For the successive loops also the simple loop tests are carried out and keeping minimal values for the upper loops and typical values for the lower loops.

- Loop concatenation along with another looping technique called loop replication is used for increasing the network capacity. 

- The above mentioned approach is to be used only if the concatenated loops are found to be independent loops.

- If they are not found to be independent than the nested approach for testing is to be followed. 

- If there are two concatenated loops say loop 1 and loop 2 and if the loop counter of the loop1 is used as the initial value for the loop 2 or vice versa, then the loops are not said to be independent. 

More about Concatenated Loops

- The concatenated loops are quite easy to maintain as compared to the other types of loops except the simple loops.

- Concatenated loops form the basis of most of the program algorithms.

- The testing of these loops is carried out in accordance with the white box testing techniques. 

- The testing techniques are applied based up on the validity of the loop constructs.

- It depends up on the programmer whether the loops are tested independently or in groups. 

- The following tests can be applied to the concatenated loops:

1. Skipping of the entire loop
2. Giving one pass to the loop
3. Giving m passes to the loop where the m is less than n.
4. Giving, n, n + 1, n – 1 passes through the loop.

In the third test the n is the number of maximum passes allowed for the loop.

Basis Path Testing is a white box testing technique - Explain?

As we all know in a typical software system or application, there exist so many possible paths between the entry and exit of the paths and the number of such potential paths is doubled by every decision that comes in the way.

On top of this every case statements adds to the number of the potential paths by multiplying the number of cases with the number of potential paths and this is further incremented by the loops which multiply all the different possible iteration values with the number of potential paths.

So you see with so many paths all over, a single unit of the code makes it extremely difficult to provide a 100 percent coverage to that unit. This can be illustrated by the following example:

- Consider a software program consisting a straight line code having only a single loop that is to be executed 50 times.
- For such a code we can easily make out that it will have 50 paths.
- Like all the other processes, the testing also does not have any unlimited amount of resources.
- There are a limited number of people to perform testing, limited resources, time, efforts and equipment to make up to the successful testing in a stipulated period of time.
- The testing processes always face a challenge of covering all the possible paths without going out of the specified limits.
- But this seems like very difficult to be achieved!

"This all can be possibly achieved if all the redundancy is eliminated from the source code to the maximum extent that is possible and at the same time, adequate coverage must be maintained."

How was basis path testing developed?

- Basis path testing was developed as a hybrid between the two testings namely the path testing and the branch testing.

- The path testing is the testing methodology that has been defined to execute paths all over a computer program whether all or selected and the branch testing is the testing methodology that has been defined for the execution of all the outcomes of every decision in a software source code.

- It can be thought of as a testing methodology that tests every branch and also all the independent paths throughout the software program.

- A path can be a sequence of statements or instructions to the system that starts at one junction and ends at the other and in between it may encounter several other junctions.

- An independent path is a bit different from the normal path in the way that it introduces a new set of processing statements or conditions.

What steps are involved in basis path testing?

It is a path that takes in to account only the paths with the linear combination of the iterations and in no other way. The following steps are involved in the basis path testing:

1. Drawing out of the control flow graph
2. Calculation of the cyclomatic complexity
3. A basis set of paths is chosen
4. Generation of the test cases for the execution of each and every path in the code

Benefits of Basis Path Testing

1. It clearly defines the number of the independent paths and the number of the test cases required.
2. It executes every statement at least once.
3. It executes every condition for both outcomes i.e., true and false at least once.
4. It pays attention to the logic of the program.
5. It facilitates the arbitrary test case design in contrast to the analytical test case design.

Basis path testing is a white box testing technique since one requires an in-depth knowledge of the program.

Basis Path Testing - A white Box testing technique.

Basis Path Testing uses the algorithmic flow of the program to design tests. Test cases that are written to test the basis set execute every statement in the program at least once.

- A flow graph should be drawn only when the logical structure of a component is complex. The flow graph allows you to trace program paths more readily. When compound conditions are encountered in a procedural design, the generation of a flow graph becomes slightly more complicated.

- Independent program path is a path which has at least one new set of processing statements or a new condition. An independent path should move along one edge that has not been traversed before. To know how many paths to look for, cyclomatic complexity is a useful metric for predicting those modules that are likely to be error prone. It can be used for test planning as well as test case design. Cyclomatic complexity provides the upper bound on the number of test cases that will be required to guarantee that every statement in the program has been executed at least one time.

- There are few steps to derive test cases or the basis set.
A flow graph is drawn using the design or code.
The cyclomatic complexity of flow graph is evaluated.
A basis set of linear independent path is determined.
Test cases are prepared forcing the execution of each path in basis set.

- Graph matrix is a square matrix whose size is equal to the number of nodes on flow graph. It is a tabular representation of a flow graph. Adding link weight to the each matrix entry, graph matrix can become a powerful tool to evaluate program control structure during testing.

Model Driven Architecture (MDA) - Advantages and MDA Process

The MDA is a new way of writing specifications, based on a platform-independent
model.

Why should we use Model Driven Architecture

- Portability
- Interoperability
- Domain facilities provide much wider interoperability.
- MDA allows to model the functionality and behavior only once, therefore saves a lot of time.
- Requirements are always changing.
- New technology is arising.
- Require to integrate old system with new system, and any other system in future.
- MDA makes it easier to integrate applications and facilities across middle-ware boundaries.

Model Driven Architecture Process

THE BASIC PROCESS
- To construct a MDA application, the first step is to create a computation independent model(CIM) by a business analyst.
- The CIM is transformed into platform independent model(PIM) by enterprise architect.
- The resulting PIM has to be targeted to a platform to complete the build process.
- The transformation of a PIM to a PSM will be done by a platform specialist.

THE COMPLEX PROCESS
The process from computation independent model to platform specific model can be a bit more complex.
- Between the models, there can be some gaps present which makes transformation difficult.
- As a result, you can have interrelated models having different layers of abstraction.
- One consequence is that a single layer of abstraction can have horizontal transformations. Consider the example where a PIM is converted multiple times into more detailed PIMs. And there are vertical transformations in addition to vertical transformation of models.

Model Driven Architecture (MDA) - Characteristics and Viewpoints

OMG was formed as a standards organization to help reduce complexity, lower costs, and hasten the introduction of new software applications.
- The Object Management Group (OMG) adopted the Model Driven Architecture as an approach for using models in software development.
- Its three primary goals are portability, interoperability and reusability through architectural separation of concerns.

Characteristics of Model Driven Architecture(MDA)

- MDA enables development of new specifications.
- MDA provides a comprehensive, structured solution for application interoperability and portability into the future.
- MDA consists of services specified by OMG. It also includes directory services, event handling, persistence, transactions, and security.
- MDA enables the creation of standardized domain models for some vertical industries.
- MDA separates the operation of the system from the way it uses its capabilities of its platform.
- MDA enables converting platform-independent models to produce platform-specific models using mappings.

What are different viewpoints of Model Driven Architecture

- The first viewpoint is called Computation Independent Viewpoint which focuses on environment and requirements of the system rather than the details of system's structure and processing.
- The second viewpoint is called Platform Independent Viewpoint which focuses on how the system operates. It hides the details necessary for a particular platform. The part of complete specification does not change when the platform changes.
- The third viewpoint is called Platform Specific Viewpoint which focus on the detail of the use of a specific platform in addition to platform independent viewpoint.