Addendum #04 – Verifying the Report Dataset

As I explain in my book with test example 8 in chapter 8, the testability framework – or actually the test toolkit – does not provide for layout testing, only dataset testing.

Those who bought both the 1^st and 2^nd edition of my book might have noticed that the verification part of this report test example changed.

1^st Edition

The verification code part of the 1^st edition was like the following:

local procedure VerifyCustomerWithLookupValueOnCustomerListReport(
    No: Code[20]; LookupValueCode: Code[10])
var
    Row: array[2] of Integer;
begin
    Row[1] := LibraryReportDataset.FindRow(
        'Customer_No_', No);
    Row[2] := LibraryReportDataset.FindRow(
        'Customer_Lookup_Value_Code', LookupValueCode);
    Assert.AreEqual(
        13, Row[2] - Row[1],
        'Delta between columns Customer_No_ and Customer_Lookup_Value_Code')
end;

Where the FindRow(ElementName: Text, ElementValue: Variant) method, from Library - Report Dataset (131007), returns the row number for the combination of ElementName and ElementValue. In our case the combination of column Customer_No_ or column Customer_Lookup_Value_Code and its respective value No or LookupValueCode. Apparently the row number of column Customer_No_ yielded another value than that of column Customer_Lookup_Value_Code as you can see from the AreEqual check where the delta between the row numbers is expected to be 13. This indeed was true on BC14, the version the 1^st edition was based on, although you might have expected that the row number should be exactly the same as No and LookupValueCode belong to the same customer record.

2^nd Edition

When using this code on B19, the version the 2^nd edition was based on, the verification did not work as FindRow returned always 0, as I reported to MS. So, it seemed I could not use FindRow method anymore and decided to make use of the AssertElementWithValueExists method from Library - Report Dataset (131007) as per the following code:

local procedure VerifyCustomerWithLookupValueOnCustomerListReport(
    No: Code[20]; LookupValueCode: Code[10])
begin
    LibraryReportDataset.AssertElementWithValueExists(
        'Customer_No_', No);
    LibraryReportDataset.AssertElementWithValueExists(
        'Customer_Lookup_Value_Code', LookupValueCode);
end;

I was not very happy, but didn’t have much time to ponder over this. Later, however, a number of attendees to my online course rightfully pointed out that this new verification code was not 100% robust. Why? Well, the checks on the columns Customer_No_ and Customer_Lookup_Value_Code could both be passing even though these two columns reside in the dataset at unrelated rows. I had to get back and study the issue once more which I did this week. I also added an issue for it to the GitHub of my book: Issue 31 FindRow in “Library – Report Dataset” (131007) yields a different result on BC14 than on BC18.

I tested both solutions on their related version, i.e. BC14 and BC19, again and saw both passing. While debugging the 2^nd edition version I, however, noted that FindRow did not return a 0. It actually returned the same raw number for a related set of columns Customer_No_ and Customer_Lookup_Value_Code resulting in a delta of 0. This meant that I could revert the 2^nd edition version of VerifyCustomerWithLookupValueOnCustomerListReport to the 1^st edition version only changing the expected delta from 13 to 0 as per the below:

local procedure VerifyCustomerWithLookupValueOnCustomerListReport(
    No: Code[20]; LookupValueCode: Code[10])
var
    Row: array[2] of Integer;
begin
    Row[1] := LibraryReportDataset.FindRow(
        'Customer_No_', No);
    Row[2] := LibraryReportDataset.FindRow(
        'Customer_Lookup_Value_Code', LookupValueCode);
    Assert.AreEqual(
        0, Row[2] - Row[1],
        'Delta between row for columns Customer_No_ and Customer_Lookup_Value_Code')
end;

I have updated all version related branches on the GitHub repo. you might notice that I left the two original lines of code as comments.

Case closed.