Testing messaging with a decision table

Recently I was testing the messages sent from an app to the user when I noticed that the messages were dependent on the interaction of three conditions. I used a decision table to analyse the messaging because decision tables show how many tests are required to test something that is affected by a group of conditions . 

In an earlier post I gave the steps for creating a decision table.

I had thought that decision tables would be useful for testing API endpoints. I have learned that testing messaging would be another use for decision tables. In the scenario I was testing there were three conditions. I found that all the three conditions could be true or false and that the message contained varied depending on whether each of the three conditions were true or false. Analysing this problem was most easily done with a decision table as the actions defined by the table would be the tests for the messages the app creates. 

Decision tables have one row for each condition. The number of rules in a decision table is 2 to the power of the number of conditions. There were three conditions so I would need eight columns for the rules. The actions in the table would cover all the test cases. What I needed to do was ensure that I had listed the conditions correctly as the decision table would then show me how many actions were required to test the messages. See the image above for an example of the decision table.

When I had created a decision table and I could execute the tests in the table. The decision table would ensure that I defined tests for each of the possible variations of the three conditions.

I shared my decision table with my team to help them in their work as I don’t want to find bugs, I want to help prevent them. 

Using a decision table had a number of advantages. It ensured that the tests covered all the functionality as I knew that I had covered all the conditions. It also gave me something I could share with the developers and help them in their developer testing which would mean that there are less bugs for me to find.

Further Reading: Computer Science 4th Edition by C. S. French