ReqIF Studio and testing

[Paul Chisholm]

Do you have any recommendations concerning the integration of ReqIF Studio with testing tools?

I recently completed a project where I used ReqIF Studio, but did not have access to a testing tool that directly integrated with Studio, so just I used Studio as is.

There were five layers:
– business rules
– requirements
– test plan
– test procedures
– test data

While the first two are what I expected to use Studio for, I wanted to have complete traceability so I incorporated the three test layers in Studio as well, using links to map between adjacent layers, and Deduct to ensure consistency and completeness.

Despite not being designed for testing, Studio turned out to a remarkably good fit for the test layers. The result was far superior to approaches we have used previously. In this context I am referring to test cases that are run manually, not automated testing.

Are there better ways to do this? (following the ReqIF Studio philosophy of low cost and complexity).

[Michael Jastram]

Hi Paul – glad to hear that Studio works for you well for testing!

Integrating with test tools is simple in principle: Outside the Eclipse ecosystem, you can write a script that updates the XML with the test data (test runs). Inside the Eclipse system, you can programmatically access the data model with EMF.

> Are there better ways to do this?

To me, this sounds like a good solution, considering the constraints of your environment. Within these constraints, I’d be careful to go further, otherwise you’re compromising the low-complexity aspect of your setup.

If you need better support for manual testing, then it may be worth checking for testing tools with native ReqIF support. Using those may simplify integration significantly.

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