Attributes are site-specific characteristics that you can define for your test plan and assign to test descriptions and group descriptions. Attributes are used to categorize tests, so that you can reference them as a group. Attributes can also be incorporated into queries, which allow you to mark tests that match the query’s criteria. Marked tests can be run as a group.
By assigning attributes to parts of the test plan, you can:
For example, you might define an attribute called Engineer that represents the set of QA engineers that are testing an application through a given test plan. You might then define values for Engineer like David, Jesse, Craig, and Zoe, the individual engineers who are testing this plan. You can then assign the values of Engineer to the tests in the test plan. Certain tests are assigned the value of David, others the value of Craig, and so on. You can then run a query to mark the tests that have a given value for the Engineer attribute. Finally, you can run just these marked tests.
Attributes are also used to generate reports. You do not need to mark the tests or build a query in this case.
Attributes and values, as well as queries, are stored by default in testplan.ini which is located in the Silk Test Classic installation directory. The initialization file is specified in the Data File for Attributes and Queries field in the General Options dialog box.
Silk Test Classic ships with predefined attributes. You can also create up to 254 user-defined attributes.
Make sure that all the QA engineers in your group use the same initialization body file. You can modify the definition of an attribute.
Modifying attributes and values through the Define Attributes dialog box has no effect on existing attributes and values already assigned to the test plan. You must make the changes in the test plan yourself.