After you have created a
datapool and have enabled your test to use the datapool, you associate
a specific value in the test with a specific datapool column.
Procedure
- In the Test Navigator, browse to the test and double-click
it. The test opens.
- Locate and click a request that contains a value to replace
with variable data.
Clicking a test page shows you a
table that lists datapool candidates and correlated data on that page.
(If correlated data is not displayed, right-click the table and verify
that Show References is selected.) References
are shown in blue letters and datapool candidates are shown in black
letters.
If the contents of the Value column
corresponds exactly with column data in your datapool, click the row,
and then click Substitute. The Select
Data Source window opens. Skip to step 6. You can ignore
step 8, because URL encoding is preselected.
Otherwise, double-click
the row to navigate to the page request that contains the value to
replace from a datapool, and continue to the next step.
The
value to replace from a datapool might not be listed in any page table.
In this case, manually locate the request string that includes the
value.
- If the value to replace from a datapool is part of a string
that has been designated a datapool candidate, you must remove the
light green highlight: right-click and select Remove Substitution. For example, if you searched for doe, john in your test,
the datapool candidate in your test is displayed as doe%2C+john.
Suppose that you do not want to associate this candidate with a single
datapool column that contains data in the format doe, john.
Instead, you want to associate doe and john with separate
datapool columns. In this case, you must first remove the substitution.
- Highlight the value: With the left button pressed, drag
your mouse over the value.
- Right-click the highlighted value, and select .
The
Select Data Source window
opens.
Note: To use a datapool that is not listed, click Datapool:
the Select datapool column window opens.
- Click the name of the datapool variable, or column, to
associate with the test value.
- Click Select.
To
indicate that the association has been set, the highlighting for the
selected test value turns dark green, and the datapool table for this
page is updated as shown in the example.
- Optional: Encode variable data when it is substituted
from a datapool.
If a test value contains special
characters such as spaces or commas, click the row and select URL
Encode. With this option, special characters are encoded
when variable data is substituted from a datapool. For example, data
that is space-separated in a datapool column might need to be encoded.
When URL encoding is enabled, John Doe is substituted as John%20Doe.
If URL encoding is not selected, the variable data that is substituted
is literal. Do not enable URL encoding for datapools that contain
data that is already encoded.
- Optional: If you substitute an element of a
page with a datapool column, to view the substitutions in the Page
Elements report, in the Test Elements Details area of the request
click the Use the substituted URL in performance reprots check
box.
- Save the test.