INCONSISTENT DATA

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Issue summary

The data needed for the automated test cases changes unpredictably

Category

Design

Examples

• Test data is obtained by anonymising customer data. This has some major disadvantages:
  - The data must by anonymised (this can be tricky)
  - You must be able to use different IDs or search criteria for every run
  - you probably won't get just the data combination that you need for a special test case and if you add it, it will be overwritten next time you get a new batch of customer data
  - different input data means different output data, so it will be more difficult to compare results
• Test automation shares databases with testing or development
• After an update to the Software Under Test (SUT) the data is not compatible any longer
• Tests alter the data for following tests

Questions

How do you collect the necessary data?

Resolving Patterns

Most recommended:

• FRESH SETUP should help you in most cases
• DEDICATED RESOURCES: look up this pattern if you have to share resources
• WHOLE TEAM APPROACH: if your team follows an agile development process this is the pattern to use in order to avoid this kind of problems from the beginning

Other useful patterns:

• SHARE INFORMATION: use this pattern for better communication between development, testing and automation
• DESIGN FOR REUSE: this pattern should be used always

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