Using CA Application Test › Using the Workstation and Console with CA Application Test › Building Test Cases › Data Sets › Data Sets and Properties

Data Sets and Properties

Data sets can use properties.

Important uses of properties include the following:

• When specifying the location of an external data set, we can use a property, perhaps LISA_HOME rather than a hard-coded value for the path name. For example: LISA_HOME\myTests\myDataset.csv

  Using a property instead of a hard-coded value increases data set portability. Because properties used in this way must typically be available early in the test run, you must define them in one of the following ways:

  • As a system property
  • In a configuration

  You can define a dummy value in your configuration and can modify it later. This value allows the file to be found at design time. This use of properties is important when you are running your tests on DevTest Server.

• Data set values can contain properties. These values are evaluated when the value is read. For example, we could set up a login value in the data set as student _1. Then, if the current value of student is Bart, the resulting data value becomes Bart_1.
• Local data sets can use properties from the test case, but global data sets cannot because all virtual users share them.