Hybrid-driven Automated Testing Approach for Complex Process Equipment Software

Automated testing is an approach to transforming human-driven testing behavior into automated machine execution, which can perform many tests that are difficult or impossible to achieve by manual testing. Due to complex business, tight coupling, strict timing, and a large amount of data exchange, many equipment software cannot be tested by manual testing. Developing dedicated test tools is costly, time-consuming, and requires advanced programming knowledge. That poses a significant challenge for testers with limited programming skills. To this end, we propose a hybrid-driven automated testing approach. We design and realize a test automation platform based on the ideas of data-driven and keyword-driven testing. We also design configuration rules and implement them in this platform. With this platform, testers only need to focus on business analysis and make simple configurations to conduct automated testing for complex process equipment software. There is no need to develop dedicated test tools or write test scripts, which reduces the technical threshold for automated testing. Application results indicate that our approach can perform more business scenarios than manual testing and physical testing. Compared with conventional automated testing approaches, ours does not require testers to have programming skills. It is simple to use, easy to maintain, and extensible.