Managing Test Data in Cradle

Cradle can be used to create and manage the requirements for, operational scenarios of, behaviour within, and architecture of, any system. By linking this information with cross references, it can provide full traceability within the analysis and design process, and full compliance and coverage analyses of this information.

It can also be used to manage all of the information used to verify that the system as built is compliant with the constraints expressed in these architectural, behavioural and operational descriptions, and also with the needs expressed in its requirements.

A Cradle database can contain any amount of information, held in items, each of which has an item type. Thus a user requirement is an item of type user requirement, a test plan is an item of type test plan, a verification is an item of type verification, and so on.

There are no limits on the number of these item types, and no limit on the number of items of each item type. This means that Cradle can be used to manage test data at all levels in your SE process:

1. Create item types for each level of test information that you want to create, such as:
   • Acceptance criteria for user requirements
   • Verifications for system requirements
   • Test specifications for use cases, activities or functions
   • Test plans for high-level architecture components
   • Test descriptions for lower-level architecture components
2. Define a new type of cross reference (a new link type) for cross references to these new item types. We recommend using the same link type for all cross references from requirements and design data to test data.
3. At each stage in the process, define the test data for the design data that has just been created and create the cross references from the design data to the test data
4. Produce traceability and coverage views from design to test and test to design data, respectively, to ensure that all necessary test data has been prepared at all stages in the lifecycle
5. Produce traceability and coverage views within and between the levels of test data (for example from verifications to test specifications) to allow each level of test data to be validated as being both necessary and sufficient with respect to the higher level test data, and to ensure that all test data required at the new level has indeed been developed.
6. Once the test data has been validated, testing can occur. As testing occurs, record the results of the tests into the test descriptions, test plans, test specifications, verifications and acceptance criteria and re-generate the coverage and compliance views with the design data to show the completeness of the system verification.
7. Generate metrics throughout the testing process of the completeness of testing, the numbers of passes and fails, and the progress of the corrective actions needed to address the failures.