Automated Test Data Capture via XML Serialization
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Solution Overview
Problem
The manual creation and maintenance of test data for processor-based systems is a laborious and error-prone process, especially in systems with multiple modules and formats, making system analysis and testing inefficient.
Innovation Solution
Automating the creation and maintenance of test data by capturing and serializing data from a production system into XML format, which is then deserialized and processed in a secondary system for analysis, debugging, and error localization, reducing the need for manual data preparation and minimizing errors.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Ease of manufacture
If manual creation and maintenance of test data is used, then flexibility in data preparation is maintained, but labor intensity and error rate increase significantly
Solution Approach 1:
The patent captures actual production data and creates copies for use as test data. Instead of manually creating test data, the system automatically copies real data from the production environment, serializes it to XML format, and uses it for testing. This eliminates manual data preparation while maintaining data authenticity and reducing errors.
Solution Approach 2:
The system performs self-service by automatically capturing, serializing, and preparing test data without human intervention. The automated data capture system retrieves production data, converts it to the required format, and makes it available for testing, thereby eliminating the need for manual test data preparation and reducing both time and labor requirements.
2Adaptability or versatility
If manual test data preparation is used, then adaptability to different formats is maintained through human judgment, but error susceptibility increases
Solution Approach 1:
The system copies actual production data that already exists in the correct formats, eliminating manual formatting operations that introduce errors. By capturing real data as-is and serializing it to XML, the system maintains format adaptability while significantly improving reliability through automated, error-free data retrieval and transformation.
3Productivity
If automated data capture is implemented, then productivity and consistency improve, but system complexity increases
Solution Approach 1:
The patent introduces an intermediary component that serializes captured production data to XML format. This intermediary layer handles the complexity of data format conversion and standardization, allowing the rest of the system to work with uniform XML data. The serialization intermediary manages the complexity while enabling high productivity and consistency in data processing.
4Measurement precision
If production data is captured and serialized to XML, then data accuracy for testing is improved, but processing time for conversion increases
Solution Approach 1:
The system performs preliminary serialization of captured data to XML format, preparing it in advance for testing. By converting data to the required XML format as part of the automated capture process rather than during testing, the system ensures data accuracy is available when needed while distributing the conversion workload efficiently.
Data Source
AI summary
In an embodiment, data in a first processor-based system is captured and serialized into an XML format. The XML-formatted data is transmitted to a second processor-based system, it is deserialized into a non-XML format, and it is processed in the second processor-based system. The second processor-based system is substantially similar to the first processor-based system, and the processing of the deserialized data on the second processor-based system relates to a support of the first processor-based system.