Most ATEasy projects consist of multiple programs and a system. A program is usually designed to test a single UUT. Because large-scale UUTs can have complex test requirements, ATEasy programs can contain many tests, with each test measuring a portion of the UUT. During Design time, you can set its UUT name to Program Module as well Program Shortcut (via properties pages). At runtime each test outputs a status of Pass, Fail, Error, or None.
Related groups of tests are grouped into tasks. The ability to group and organize tests into tasks enables the test engineer to match the structure of virtually any test requirements document. Within a program, tasks and tests can be moved, renamed, duplicated, and deleted.
A test consists of code that contains ATEasy programming language statements. Programming languages such as C, C++, or Visual Basic directly interface with and manipulate instruments using low-level programming statements. ATEasy tests use a higher-level set of commands that are easier to create and maintain. These commands are English-like, making the code easier to read and comprehend.
When you create a test in ATEasy, you define the test's type and the expected test results as part of the test properties. ATEasy includes a variety of test types, such as MinMax and String, and the expected test results are values or ranges of values that depend on the test type. ATEasy also provides two internal variables that are critical to test processing: TestResult and TestStatus. At the start of the test, the ATEasy OnInit event initializes these variables so that TestResult equals 0 and TestStatus equals none. The test runs and outputs a result that is stored in TestResult. ATEasy automatically compares the value of TestResult to the expected test results that you specified in the test properties. Based on this comparison, ATEasy assigns to TestStatus a value of Pass, Fail, Error, or None. ATEasy then stores the values of TestStatus and TestResult in the ATest object, where they can be retrieved by the AProgram, ATask, and ATest classes. At the end of the test, the OnEndTest event outputs the test data to the ATEasy log.