Test Automation

CastleBay emphasizes the importance of automated testing. Automated testing converts manual effort into a reusable asset. Automated tests can be employed during customization and used through out the project. It can then support the maintenance phase of the system.

In the past, automated testing had these problems:

• Automated testing meant recording and playing back scripts. For good coverage, a large number of scripts had to be recorded. This led to a collection of recordings that are difficult to maintain as the system changes.
• Scripts broke if the user interface changed.
• As a result, automated testing tended to be used near the end of the project, rather than an evaluation tool during early phases of the project.
• The testing tools had a difficult learning curve.
• Licensing and maintenance fees inhibited adoption and wide use of the test tools.

The CastleBay approach solves these problems.

GFIT is an implementation of the FIT library in Gscript. Gscript is Guidewire's language for configuring its products. Gscript provides an interface to the capabilities of ClaimCenter and other Guidewire products. It also offers special features that make manipulating the products easier. Gscript is the most productive interface to Guidewire products.

GFIT allows FIT fixtures to be written in Gscript. Developers can write fixtures more quickly in Gscript than in other languages. Fixtures can take advantage of the Gscript features for manipulating Guidewire products. In addition, GFIT provides sample fixtures that can be used out of the box. Some test cases can be written without writing fixtures.

GFIT is particularly well suited to:

• setting up test data
• testing business rules
• testing interfaces.

A benefit of GFIT is that testers can perform automated tests without testing through the user interface. Some other automated test tools require testing through the user interface. As a result, changes in the user interface require changes in the tests. Often, the user interface is the component that changes the most during the life of the project. GFIT are sensitive to changes in the data model and business rules, but these tend to change less than the user interface.

Testing with GFIT also tend to be more reliable than automated tests through the user interface. The latter can be sensitive to response times of the server and error handling. GFIT tests do not have these problems.

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The WATIR Framework for Guidewire is a testing framework written in the Ruby language. It is used for testing through the user interface. WATIR is an open-source set of Ruby classes for manipulating Web pages in Microsoft Internet Explorer. CastleBay has added a framework on top of WATIR that performs these functions:

• It contains methods that know how to find and manipulate HTML widgets particular to the Guidewire standards.
• It works with the Ruby FIT library so that tests are driven by FIT tests.
• It contains classes to speed the writing of fixtures in Ruby

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