Sometimes there are steps in a test that return a huge amount of complicated data when you actually are interested in only a small part of that data. And, more importantly, it can often be a hassle to try to create a good response map for these large complex responses – when all you need is a small part of the data. Well, there is a new feature in iTest 3.4 that is going to help. This “response filtering” capability allows you to define a set of filters that will be applied to a response before it goes further into response mapping and analysis. That means that you can define a simple filter to isolate the portion of the response that you need – and exclude the other parts. That means your test reports will be cleaner, and your response mapping will be easier. The filters you define can be simple (e.g., “Everything starting at this line, until that line”) or really sophisticated (e.g., “Omit any lines that contain this word, except for lines that start with this”) and you can use as many filters as you want.
Another case where this feature is really helpful is when you have devices that may spew out console log messages in the middle of your output. As long as your log messages are not interleaved character by character with your regular output, and they have a well defined structure, you can use response filtering to extract those from your response. You can even ask iTest to keep them around separately for further analysis as well.
So if you’ve had to deal with large unwieldy responses, or you are trying to deal with autonomous log messages, you may find response filtering as a valuable new weapon to use in iTest 3.4.
Want to learn more? Click the play button on the video to see this feature in action.
Message Edited by BethanyW on 06-03-2009 11:23 AM
