Zambelich Approach Summary

Zambelich summarizes his approach as follows (4):

The Spreadsheet (which may be one of many contained in a workbook) is saved as a “tab-delimited” file. Tab-delimited rather than comma-delimited is used because data often contains commas (e.g., Last_Name, First_Name) that will confuse the processing.

This file is read by a Controller script and processed. When a Key Word is encountered, a list is created using data from the remaining columns. This continues until a “null” (blank) in column-2 and column-3 is encountered (this is why we use a blank or null line between Key-Word sections).

The Controller script then calls a Utility script associated with the Key Word, which passes the “list” created as an input parameter. The Utility script processes this list, which contains the specific actions to take, data to enter or verify, etc.

The Utility script processes the column-2 (parameter) and column-3 data for each row, in much the same way as the Controller script processes the column-1 (Key-Word) data. The Utility script may call User-Defined functions to perform specific actions or may just use the standard TSL functionality to accomplish this.

This continues until an “end-of-list” condition is reached or until a fatal-error occurs. The Utility script then returns control back to the Controller script, which continues processing the tab-delimited file until an “end-of-file” condition is reached or until a “fatal-error” return-code is received from the Utility script.

In order to process a number of scripts, the Controller script is called by a Driver script. The Driver script contains the names of all of the Test Cases to run, and calls the Controller script for each test, passing to it the name of each Test Case (saved tab-delimited file).

This architecture is very flexible, as the Driver script is not limited to calling the Controller script to process the Key-Word driven Test Case. It can also call Business Function type scripts, or even Recorded scripts. All methods of automated testing can be supported by this architecture.