Some testing activities can be accomplished with simple tabular data, as opposed to complex hierarchical data structures. You can create simple data sets in CTP that can be used in tests executed in the desktop, command line, or web interface. You can either create an empty data set and populate it manually or create a data set by importing a file containing the data.
In this section:
Important Concept and Terminology
See About the Data Repository for definitions of terms used in this section.
Manually Creating a Data Set
- In the Data tab, choose a repository from the server menu and click the add data set button.
- Specify a name for the data set and a name for the record type name (optional). The record type name specifies what kind of data the data set contains. By default, the record type name takes the name of the data set, but you can specify a different name depending on your needs.
- Choose the Empty option and click Create.
The data set will be added to the repository page. - See Adding and Modifying Data.
Creating a Data Set on Import
Only CSV and CSV-formatted files are currently supported for import.
- In the Data tab, choose a repository from the server menu and click the add data set button.
- Specify a name for the data set and a name for the record type name (optional).
- Choose the From CSV File option and click Next.
- Choose the file containing the data when prompted. The uploader detects column headers. By default, the encoding is set to UTF-8. The separator and quote characters are set also to common characters by default. If your file has a different encoding or uses different separator and quotation mark characters, change them in the drop-down menu.
(Optional) Configure how the data is imported. Click in a field in the File options and choose from the available settings. Enable the Trim spaces option to remove extraneous spaces from the data. You can designate a field as a key, value, or both. Keys enable message responders to find the correct row of data to construct responses.
- Click Create when finished configuring the data set. A task is to import the data will be added to the TDA task queue (see Reviewing Tasks in TDA). The data set may not appear on the repository or be available immediately. You can continue using CTP while the import task is being processed. A message will tell you when the import is finished.
- Click on the data set to edit the data. See Adding and Modifying Data.
Adding and Modifying Data
You can add and remove rows and columns after adding a data set. Click on a data set on the repository page to view its data.
Click on the ellipsis menu in the data set header to add key columns, value columns, and to add first and last rows. New key columns are added to the beginning of the table (immediately to the right of the Row # column) in alphabetical order according the following precedence:
New value columns are always added to the end of the table.
About Key and Value Column Names
Column names cannot:
- contain white spaces
- contain non-alphanumeric characters
- start with a digit
- use underscores as the first or last character
If the file contains any of these characters, they will be replaced by underscores when imported into a data set.
Click on the column actions menu to rename or delete the column. You can also sort how the data is presented by key column values. Sorting does not affect the structure of the data.
Click the row actions menu to add an inline row, duplicate the data row, or delete the row.
Duplicated and newly-added rows are added below the actioned row and are highlighted.
Click on the edit icon to enable editing values for the row. When in edit mode, the edit icon changes to the save button and the row actions menu icon changes to the cancel button.
Change the value of the Row # field to change the order when the data is used in SOAtest.
Downloading a Data Set
You can download a copy of the data set to a CSV file.
- Click on a data set and click Download.
- Choose the encoding, separator, and quote settings when prompted and click Download.
