Performing Regression Test of windPRO

Introduction

What is Regression Testing?:

'Regression testing is a type of software testing that seeks to uncover new software bugs, or regressions, in existing functional and non-functional areas of a system after changes such as enhancements, patches or configuration changes, have been made to them.'

(Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regression_testing)

Regression Testing is done all the time by the windPRO software development team. Whenever some feature has been added or changes, it has to be ensured that these changes do not influence the rest of windPRO in any negative way. Performing this kind of testing manually can be quite an extensive job. Over the years a number of procedures and tools have been designed to help the process. The purpose of this document is to describe how windPRO end-users can benefit from one of these tools.

Regression Testing as a tool for end-users

The windPRO Calculation Tester is a small tool delivered together with windPRO. It allows anybody the design a windPRO project and use this project to perform regression testing.

The basic flow is:

• Design a simplified project with some data and calculations typical for your normal work-flow
• Run the project through the calculation tool and save the results for future reference
• Whenever required re-run the calculations and compare the results to the saved ones
• Evaluate any changes in the results.
  • What is causing the change (windPRO or external setup)?
  • Is the change a software bug or an improvement?

This can be beneficial on several occasions:

• After installing windPRO upgrades (New version or Service Pack)
• After changing the setup of the windPRO environment
  • New PC / OS
  • Installing Windows Updates
  • Updating firewall / antivirus
  • Rearranging the organization of windPRO data

Guide

Designing a project

The creation of the project is done using standard windPRO. Any windPRO project should in principle be usable for a regression test, but for efficiency here is a few guidelines:

• Setup the most simple possible project that captures the calculation setup you want to test
• Limit the amount data in order to have quick calculations and hence quick feedback
• Create new dedicated projects for regression test and keep all data used in the project folder (and sub-folders)
  • Avoid references to any data on network drives and any data used in other projects

The first run

Start the Calculation Tester: