Keyword-Driven Tests

Keyword-driven testing is a software testing methodology that separates test design from test development and therefore allows the involvement of additional professional groups, for example business analysts, in the test automation process. Silk Central and Silk Test support the keyword-driven testing methodology and allow a very close collaboration between automation engineers and business analysts by having automation engineers develop a maintainable automation framework consisting of shared assets in the form of keywords in Silk Test. These keywords can then be used by business analysts either in Silk Test to create new keyword-driven tests or in Silk Central to convert their existing manual test assets to automated tests or to create new keyword-driven tests.

• A keyword-driven test is an executable collection of keywords. A keyword-driven test can be played back just like any other test.
• A keyword sequence is a keyword that is a combination of other keywords. Keyword sequences bundle often encountered combinations of keywords into a single keyword, enabling you to reduce maintenance effort and to keep your tests well-arranged.
• A keyword is a defined combination of one or more actions on a test object. The implementation of a keyword can be done with various tools and programming languages, for example Java or .NET.

For a complete list of the record and replay controls available for keyword-driven testing, see the Keyword-Driven Testing Class Reference.