Patent ID: 7590973

Claim:
A computer system for selecting and organizing individual test cases for use in testing a computer program to ensure that the program processes as intended, the system comprising: one or more program modules storing a plurality of available test cases, each comprising a set of instructions for testing a feature of the computer program; a harness client comprising a set of instructions that (i) receives user input specifying one or more filenames corresponding to the one or more program modules, (ii) initiates execution of a connector to scan for and discover the plurality of available test cases that are stored in the one or more program modules and to organize the plurality of available test cases into a test case hierarchy, and (iii) receives user input indicating which of the plurality of available test cases in the test case hierarchy are selected test cases to be executed on the computer program; a harness comprising a set of instructions that (i) receives the test case hierarchy including the one or more program modules storing the plurality of test cases, (ii) traverses the test case hierarchy, and (iii) executes each of the selected test cases through a language and format independent interface by implementing an architecture that defines a means for accessing one or more resources over a network; the connector, initiatable by the harness client, and comprising a set of instructions that (i) scans for the plurality of available test cases stored in the one or more program modules, (ii) organizes the plurality of available test cases into the test case hierarchy by extracting the plurality of available test cases from the one or more program modules, and (iii) selectively integrates the language and format independent interface in the test case hierarchy such that the harness can access the one or more available test cases using the architecture regardless of the language or format in which the one or more available test cases were written; and a processor for executing each selected test case, the harness, the harness client, and the connector, such that a first test case written in a first language and a second test case written in a second, different language are each executable by the processor through the language and format independent interface.