Abstract A system is programmed by its data. Functional testing can suffer if data is poor. This presentation gives an understanding of the ways that data work fits into the overall test effort, and gives an overview of the ways that good data can be used to improve functional testing. Setup data tells the system about the business rules.
Some input data is fixed and available at the start of the test.
Some is consumable, and forms the test input. Data can be loaded into the system manually, or by tools. The presentation discusses the advantages and pitfalls of various methods and suggests partitioning strategies to allow reliability and flexibility in the same dataset. The frequency and timing of data loading is also discussed. Data maintenance is a substantial task, often comparable in size with test script maintenance.