Grant Holliday

One of the scenarios listed on the MSDN page for Visual Studio Team System Code Name “Rosario” is:

Integrated test case management to create, organize and manage test cases across both the development and test teams

Some of the tools to support this scenario are available in the latest November CTP which you can download from here.

Camano

The first thing I noticed after logging in to the VPC was an icon on the desktop for an application I’ve never heard of before: Camano.exe.

I did a search to find out if anybody else knew what Camano was – and how did it slip past me? Well the good news is that it didn’t slip past me and it’s another codename named after an island in Pugeot Sound. See my previous blog post on Where is Camano Island?

…a standalone application that allows users the ability to author, plan and manage a testing effort from a simple UI specialized for displaying test artifacts.  This CTP introduces the functionality for planning and managing a testing effort in Camano.

Internally at Microsoft there’s no such job title for a tester that doesn’t code – all testers are SDET’s – developers that write automated test suites, etc. The current testing tools in Visual Studio 2005/2008 are geared towards this type of tester with Unit Testing, Web Testing and Load Testing support.

Outside of Microsoft, there’s a lot of non-developer testers. Lets call them “Manual  Testers” or “Generalist Testers”. Unlike developers, they do not tend to have a technical background and are thus not able to code or to do so in the future.

Because these Testers are not familiar with the Visual Studio shell and probably have no desire to learn it because it’s a developer’s tool, the Tester Edition of Rosario introduces Camano and the Manual Test Runner.

At first glance we can tell that it’s a WPF application. Within Camano, there is some terminology that gets used. I’m going to run through how to create each of these and how they relate to each other:

• Test Case – A single path of steps through an application.
• Test Suite – A grouping of test cases that test similar functionality.
• Test Configuration – A machine or application configuration that tests will be executed on or against.
• Test Pass – A single combination of Test Configuration and Test Suites.
• Test Plan – A collection of one or more Test Passes.
• Test Run – The results of executing one or more Test Cases.

Create a Test Case

We start by navigating to Testing | New Test Case. We are presented with an embedded Work Item control for the new “Test Case” work item type.

We enter a Title and Description for the test case, then move to the Steps tab of the work item and enter in the steps required in the test case:

Keen observers may notice the icon to create data bound parameters to test steps. This feature is not implemented yet, but looks promising.

After saving the test case, it is given a work item ID and can be viewed by all users of VSTS through Team Explorer or Team System Web Access.

Create a Test Suite

Now select Planning | Manage Test Suites and you’re presented with the Manage Test Suite window. Select Create Test Suite.

After saving the Test Suite, we need to add some Test Cases. Select Add/Remove Tests for Suite. By default, no test cases are shown and you have to press the search button to list them all. I would’ve liked it to show them all by default. Now select a Test Case and move it into the Test Suite. Press the Save button, then close the form by pressing the X in the top-right corner.

After adding Test Cases to a Test Suite we are back at the Manage Test Suites screen. This screen shows you a hierarchical view of all your test suites and the test cases they contain. You can keep adding new test suites under each node to build up your full testing building blocks.

Create a Test Configuration

Now that we have a Test Case in a Test Suite, we can create a Test Configuration. Select Planning | New Test Configuration.

Create a Test Plan with a Test Pass

Select Planning | New Test Plan. You are presented with a clunky WPF form to create a Test Plan. Enter in the Title, Description and Start/End dates.

My first reaction was “Hey! Where’s the date picker control?”. But of course the date picker/calendar control didn’t make it into WPF for various reasons. Hopefully that changes. But for now, you can enter in a free-text date and it will parse it to a valid DateTime value.

Now that we’ve created a complete Test Plan and Test Pass, we’re ready to execute the test plan in the Manual Test Runner. I’ve looked at that in my next blog post.

New Work Item Types – Shared Step Set and Run Template

When traversing through the different paths through an application, a lot of the time the steps are going to be the same with small variations. For example, if your application includes a Logon Form – the first two steps of any Test Case are going to be “1. Open Application”, “2. Enter valid Logon details” – or something like that. Although there’s nothing yet in Camano to share Steps – it looks like the plumbing is in place. It’ll be interesting to see what comes of it.

Continue the November Rosario CTP journey with the Manual Test Runner.