Testcover.com - Tutorial - Calendar Example

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		Tutorial - Calendar Example

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The Calendar Example illustrates the use of the test case generator with error conditions. This situation is different from the previous example which had impossible combinations to avoid. Here there are combinations which need to be tested, but they reflect abnormal conditions. These combinations lead to "rainy day" test cases which must be handled differently than "sunny day" cases.

Consider a calendar system which has three test factors with values as follows.

Test Factor	Number of Values	Test Factor Values
1. Month	12	jan feb mar apr may jun jul aug sep oct nov dec
2. Day	7	1 10 28 29 30 31 32
3. Year	3	2011 2012 2013

The tester plans to try several allowed dates, including first and last days of each month. She also will try problem dates beyond the month boundaries (e.g. Month jan with Day 32) to check that the system handles error cases correctly. One error test case that could be generated is

feb

2013

This is an error test case because 2013 is not a leap year: February has only 28 days in 2013. If this is the only test case which pairs the Month feb with Day 29, there would be a gap in exercising the normal operation of the calendar. The feb-29 pair would not be tested in an allowed date in a leap year. The tester knows that the calendar system behaves differently during error handling, so she plans to cover the feb-29 pair as a normal day in a leap year (2012) and as an error case (in 2013) also.

This is easily accomplished with two partitions, one for normal dates and one for months that are too long. There are constraints among the factor values in both partitions due to the varying month lengths. Thus both partitions have multiple blocks. Any combination of values in a block is an allowed test case.

The request for this example is shown below.
Calendar Example Month Day Year #ok All good dates jan feb mar apr may jun jul aug sep oct nov dec 1 10 2011 2012 2013 + long month last day jan mar may jul aug oct dec 31 2011 2012 2013 + short month last day apr jun sep nov 30 2011 2012 2013 + feb last day feb 28 2011 2013 + leap day feb 29 2012 #err Too long month + too long long month jan mar may jul aug oct dec 32 2011 + too long short month apr jun sep nov 31 2012 + feb too long, regular year feb 29 2013 + feb too long, leap year feb 30 2012

The two results tables follow. This example illustrates the use of Test Case ID prefixes (ok and err) to distinguish between test cases from different partitions. Optional partition comments also are shown.

Note that the feb-29 pair is covered in both partition results.

#1. All good dates

Test
Case ID Month Day Year Combo
Countdown

12 Values 6 Values 3 Values 126

ok1 jan 1 2011 123

ok2 jan 10 2012 120

ok3 feb 10 2011 117

ok4 feb 1 2013 114

ok5 mar 1 2012 111

ok6 mar 10 2013 108

ok7 may 31 2013 105

ok8 aug 31 2012 102

ok9 oct 31 2011 99

ok10 nov 30 2012 96

ok11 apr 30 2013 93

ok12 jun 30 2011 90

ok13 feb 29 2012 87

ok14 apr 1 2011 85

ok15 apr 10 2012 83

ok16 may 10 2011 81

ok17 jun 1 2012 79

ok18 jun 10 2013 77

ok19 jul 1 2011 75

ok20 jul 10 2012 73

ok21 aug 10 2011 71

ok22 aug 1 2013 69

ok23 sep 10 2011 67

ok24 sep 1 2012 65

ok25 oct 10 2012 63

ok26 nov 10 2011 61

ok27 nov 1 2013 59

ok28 dec 10 2011 57

ok29 dec 1 2012 55

ok30 jul 31 2013 53

ok31 dec 31 2013 51

ok32 jan 31 2013 49

ok33 mar 31 2011 47

ok34 sep 30 2013 45

ok35 feb 28 2011 43

ok36 may 10 2012 42

ok37 may 1 2013 41

ok38 oct 1 2011 40

ok39 oct 10 2013 39

ok40 feb 28 2013 38

#2. Too long month

Test
Case ID Month Day Year Combo
Countdown

12 Values 4 Values 3 Values 96

err1 jan 32 2011 93

err2 apr 31 2012 90

err3 feb 29 2013 87

err4 feb 30 2012 84

err5 mar 32 2011 82

err6 may 32 2011 80

err7 jul 32 2011 78

err8 aug 32 2011 76

err9 oct 32 2011 74

err10 dec 32 2011 72

err11 jun 31 2012 70

err12 sep 31 2012 68

err13 nov 31 2012 66

The PowerPoint presentation Pairwise Testing Comes of Age gives a further discussion on the selection of test input data based on the system state and expected results. A similar example starting on slide 24 explains these ideas in more detail.