In the Test Environments section of a test plan you can generate
new test environments automatically and add them to the test plan. You can
also add existing test environments to the plan.
Before you generate test environments, you must define your platform
coverage. The platforms that you have selected to be covered are used as input
to the Generate Test Environments wizard.
To generate new test environments in a test plan:
- Open the Test Environments section of a test plan.
- Click the Test Environment tab.
- Click the Generate New Test Environments icon
(
) to
start the Generate Test Environments wizard.
- Select one or several environment attributes from each column.
The number of test environments created
depends on the number of attributes selected, the level of coverage that you
choose, and the Advanced Properties (Inclusions, Exclusions, and Weightings)
that you select.
Note: Advanced Properties may not be visible until you
select at least two attributes from one of the columns.
- Select the desired level of coverage.
Use this setting
and the Advanced Properties setting to fine-tune the environments that will
be generated.
- Choose Minimal to ensure that each selected
attribute is covered at least once, with no attempt to cover specific combinations
of attributes. For example, if you select one attribute from three of the
columns, three environments are created, ensuring that each selected attribute
is covered at least once.
- Choose Medium - pair-wise interaction to ensure
that each combination of paired attributes is covered at least once.
- Choose Large - three-way interaction to ensure
that each three-way combination of attributes is covered at least once.
- Choose All - all permutations to ensure that
all combinations of attributes are covered at least once.
Note: The coverage options only become available when you start selecting
attributes. The greater the desired coverage, the more attributes and columns
you must select.
- Click Advanced Properties to display a window
with three tabs: Inclusions, Exclusions, and Weightings.
- Click Inclusions to specify the attribute combinations
to always include, for example Internet Explorer 7.x running on Windows® XP.
- Click Exclusions to specify the attribute combinations
to explicitly exclude, for example Safari browser running on Windows XP.
- Click Weightings to set the weight or importance
of each attribute relative to the other values for that attribute.
For
example, you can assign greater weight to Windows XP than SUSE Linux® to increase
the likelihood that Windows XP will be included in the list
of generated test environments.
To add an Inclusion or Exclusion, click
the Add Inclusion/Add Exclusion icon (
, select the attribute and click OK.
To
adjust a Weighting, simply move the slider.
- Click Next.
The wizard creates
a preview of the Generated Test Environments.
- If necessary, select any test environments that you want to remove
and click Finish.
The wizard generates
the test environments according to the criteria you have selected.
- Optionally, decide how you want to group the generated test environments
by selecting one of the choices in the Group By list.
- Click Save to save the newly-generated test
environments in the test plan.