Tips for Managing test data in QTP test scripts

Test Data management is an important factor for a robust automation framework. Test Data should be easily used by test scripts and should cover both positive and negative test scenarios.One of the key for successful automation is to avoid hard coded values and data in the test. To avoid hard coding test data in the script and running the same test script with multiple test data, we should take care of points explained in this article for using test data in the automation framework:

• Test data should be maintained in external data source which can be an excel, csv or database.

• Test data should be flexible. Suppose we need additional column to be used by test scripts.Test data should be used by test script in such a manner that changing the columns order or adding new column does not make any change in the test script.

• Let me explain the above point with an example. Suppose initial excel file from which test data was read has three columns of data, Password, UserName and LoginResult. Suppose if a new column has been added for dateofBirth.  Adding this new column before Loginresult should not impact the script execution.

Password	UserName	DateofBirth	LoginResult
TEST	User1	22-06-1984	FAIL
TEST	User2	13-05-1998	FAIL
T20	T200	12-09-1908	PASS
ODI	T500	12-01-2013	FAIL

• For this, we should have the column name in the first row as header and should use the test data from next row onward in the test script.The header fields name should be short but self explanatory. In the above example, Password, UserName, DateofBirth and LoginResult are header.

• The test script should provide enough flexibility to execute a given row of data or not. To provide this we should use a column for Execution Flag which will indicate whether to execute the test with the test data in the row or skip to next row. Test script should be created in manner that they can be executed and iterated with multiple rows of data.

•  Change in test data from one source to another, i.e. database to excel should have minimum impact on the test script execution.

• We can consider using test generator tools which can generate random data for testing an application.

• While preparing test data, we should dry run the test script with both positive and negative data to validate script behavior on both positive and negative conditions.

How to use Test data from external sources:

• Test data can be imported from external source using import method or using excel object.

• In case of using import methods, we will import a sheet (using import or importsheet method) or excel file into QTP data table and extract the data and use in test using get methods.

•   In case of using Excel application, we can import the data in a two dimension array and then use data from the array or using scripting.dictionary to use data from the array.

• Below is the algorithm of using scripting.dictionary to read the data and use in test scripts.
• Create an array (two dimensional) for the data in the excel sheet.
• From the array, read the top row data as header information and loop through rest of the column as data.Store the value as key-value pair e.g : Key Password will have value as ODI for the last row of the iteration. 

Below article shows how to use dictionary object to data drive a test in QTP:

http://qaautomationqtp.blogspot.in/2015/10/how-to-use-dictionary-object-in-qtp-for.html