How to Actually DO High-volume Automated Testing

In high volume automated testing (HiVAT), the test tool generates the test, runs it, evaluates the results, and alerts a human to suspicious results that need further investigation. What makes it simple is its oracle—run the program until it crashes or fails in some other extremely obvious way. More powerful HiVAT approaches are more sensitive to more types of errors. They are particularly useful for testing combinations of many variables and for hunting hard-to-replicate bugs that involve timing or corruption of memory or data. Cem Kaner presents a new strategy for teaching HiVAT testing. Instead of describing what has been done, Cem is creating open source examples of the techniques applied to real (open source) applications. These examples are written in Ruby, making the code readable and reusable by snapping in code specific to your own application. Join Cem Kaner and Carol Oliver as they describe three HiVAT techniques, their associated code, and how you can customize them.