The SQA2 Blog: BBT - How To
Graphing in BBT
Now that you’ve been introduced to the BBT tool, lets dive a bit deeper into actually using it for graphing our first graph, something simple. Now, there are multiple ways to create a contexts or outcomes. The first one is the double click, you’re able to simply double click the graph area and a creation window will appear. And the second is simply clicking on the “O” or “C” buttons next to the “Help” dropdown. Both methods spawn the same new node window where you can choose either a context or an outcome. This selection is located next to the text box.
Below is an image illustrating the new node window.
Starting with the outcome
By default the context button will be selected, but following our best practices, we should start by creating our Outcomes first. So now let’s actually start playing around with some acceptance criteria, a simple login. Our first outcome with be the something similar to successfully login in, so let’s create that outcome node by spawning that new node window and selection “Outcome.” Once you give it a good descriptive name and click save, it should look like the image below.
Adding in contexts
Now, since we are only doing a simple login, let’s just go with successfully logging in. I’m going to let the tool handle the negative conditions for me when I generate test cases in the future. Next is creating our contexts, the necessary information to achieve our outcome. When it comes to logins the most general use case is that you need to provide a user name and password. So let’s create a context for each. Your graph should now look similar to the one below.
Connecting the outcome to contexts with events
Perfect! We now have our outcome and contexts all graphed out. You are able to move all the nodes in the graph around if you don’t like the current placement by simply dragging and dropping. Now is time to make the connection from context to outcomes.
You’ll need to click the green button next to the “O” and “C” buttons at the top of the graph, this will spawn the event window. With this event we just simply want to log in. Once you come up with a easy to understand title for this event it’s all about connecting the right way. You’ll notice a “To:” dropdown. This dropdown should be set to our outcome node which will remove that node from the available connections box. Add the rest of the connections to the selected box by selecting the nodes and clicking the “>” button to add. You event should look something like the image below.
You might have noticed that the event type “and” is selected, this is fine, we want to create an and event anyway. This means later when we generate test cases both need to be true for the outcome to be true. To create the event, all you need to do now is click the save button. Your graph should now look similar to the one below.
Congratulations, you just created your very first BBT graph using the BBT tool. Now the reason I’m not including the negative scenarios like not being logged in due to missing password or user name is because the graph will do that for me. I’m letting the framework and tool do the work instead of forcing specific scenarios. Later we will cover more complicated graphs, things like constraints, different event types, and doppelgangers.