An Engineering Approach to Software Test Data Design

A systematic approach to test data design is presented based on both practical translation of theory and organization of professional lore. The approach is organized around five domains and achieving coverage (exercise) of them by the test data. The domains are processing functions, input, output, interaction among functions, and the code itself. Checklists are used to generate data for processing functions. Separate checklists have been constructed for eight common business data processing functions such as editing, updating, sorting, and reporting. Checklists or specific concrete directions also exist for input, output, interaction, and code coverage. Two global heuristics concerning all test data are also used. A limited discussion on documenting test input data, expected results, and actual results is included.