Recognizing Known Problems

When test cases are finding many problems, considerable time can be wasted pouring over all of your results files looking for previously unknown problems. In addition to the basic problem tracking functions, TestMap Extensions has another interface to identify problems with known symptoms.

The interface uses the problem symptom file tm_prob.val that contains symptoms you specify for each known problem (a text description of the input prior to the problem, the observed exception number, the observed text, and the expected results). This file is examined by each of the TmExit functions whenever they are called and the error message text is compared against the observed text of each symptom. The TmIdProblem function also uses this file and may be called at any time by your test scripts to look at multiple lines of text. This approach has been used to scan Dr Watson files or UNIX debugger files to recognize specific failures within the application under test.

Functions for Recognizing Problem Symptoms

The following two functions and a problem symptom file are used to recognize problems as they are encountered during test execution.

TmIdProblem: The file of known problem symptoms is compared against the input provided, the exception number, the observed results and the expected results. The problem numbers of all matching symptoms are returned and reported in the results file.
TmAction: Remembers a text string representation of the last action (input stimulus) performed by the test script. Each of the TmExit functions also calls TmIdProblem using this value as the input provided, and the current error message text as the observed output.
tm_prob.val: This file contains a line for each symptom description. Separate fields describe the previous input, the exception number, the observed output, and the expected value. NULL field entries are ignored. Wildcard characters are allowed to describe the text fields allowing for data to vary. An additional field permits you to define a function call that is to be executed whenever this symptom is matched. This permits this file to do thinks like shut down your test bed if there is a serious problem.