ISTQB CT-TAE – Certified Tester Test Automation Engineer — Question 49

Two years ago, you deployed a TAS that has been working well with the SUT. This TAS used test data replicated from production that consisted of various customer support contracts each with a particular setting that was being tested (such as standard response times, part replacement policy, etc.). Because these contracts never expired, the data could be used by the test automation with known expected results. A change has recently been made which causes the contracts to expire after 90 days, at which time they must be renewed with updated terms. Expired contracts cannot be used for testing.

You have decided the best way to handle this data change is to query the database for the appropriate contracts and then create a table of the contracts to be used by the test automation. In this way, the scripts will require only minimal changes and the solution will be more flexible.

Given this information, where should this change be implemented to provide the highest level of maintainability?

Answer options

• A. In the affected test automation scripts
• B. In the SUT so that the data is retrieved and stored in the current SUT database
• C. In the TAS to separate the data from the actual scripts
• D. In the TAA so that any TAS instantiated from the TAA will inherit this capability

Correct answer: C

Explanation

The correct answer is C because implementing the change in the TAS allows for a clear separation between the test data and the automation scripts, enhancing maintainability. Meanwhile, options A and B would lead to tightly coupling the data with the scripts, making future changes more difficult. Option D, while it provides inheritance capability, does not directly address the immediate need for separating data management from script execution.