Automated test data (using setup servers or setup scripts?)
Posted by Mike Longin on August 13, 2008
So I feel that this is kinda of a religious debate but I have never shied away from a little fun.
When it comes to writing an automated test (lets discuss functional UI tests), should the data come from a setup script, or sitting on a DB server that is intended for this purpose. To further complicate this question, for my company there are multiple tables that would need to have data inserted, possibly as many as 10 or more.
For myself I have found that there is no real hard and fast rule. I lean towards setup data for stock data. By stock data I mean data that is fairly static(because no data is ever 100% static) seems to be best left in a setup server. However data that is either specifically being tested or that is subject to a great deal of change should always come from a setup script.
What about you?
