As a user of Worksoft Certify to automate testing of business applications, you are often faced with this question – how to maintain the Test Data?

Based on our extensive experience across multiple engagements, we strongly recommend our customers to maintain Test Data in Certify Recordset. Certify features an integrated test repository can maintain all the test assets within it, be it requirements, scripts, test data or the test results. Our recommendation of Recordset over CSV or any other method to maintain Test Data is explained below.

If we opt for a spreadsheet or CSV to keep our test data then we need a very secure network drive or a SharePoint type DMS to prevent any unnecessary test data modifications. Whereas, Worksoft Certify has inbuilt capability to manage access to Test Data. Only those with write permissions will have the authority to modify the data.

Execution time of scripts is always very critical. Using external file usually increases the execution time, depending again on the volume of data and the network connectivity with the Shared drive/SharePoint. But if the Test Data is maintained in Certify Recordset, then execution time is very less in comparison.

Another important aspect is cost, we all know that we need license for Excel/other software whereas there is no need of any additional license/software if we are planning to use recordset for keeping our test data.

When we execute any of our script then there are times when we may face failures and in order to debug it we need to find the reason. By keeping the data in CSV, it is difficult to find out the root causes of the failures while its easier (finding and fixing data related failures) if we use a Recordset.

Another very important aspect is setting up the environment. MS Office or any other software has to be setup separately with environment specific requirements. However when we use Recordset there is no additional setup required.

Lastly, we always follow best practices and standards while writing our scripts and to keep things organized. We follow standard folder structure. If we opt for excel or CSV for our test data repository then there is a need of very strong framework for folder structure, also process change may be required if a folder name or a file name is changed. Whereas in Certify folder/layout/recordset name changes are automatically taken care of there is absolutely no additional maintenance required.

Considering the above points we strongly advocate the usage of Recordset for Test Data management in Worksoft Certify.

Contributed by Gautam Jha

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