Test Harness

“What is a test harness?” – one of the team members asked me the other day. While there are many definitions of what a test harness means, one of the easy-to-understand definitions at wikipedia.org goes like this

“In software testing, a test harness is a collection of software tools and test data configured to test a program unit by running it under varying conditions and monitor its behavior and outputs. It has two main parts namely, Test execution engine and the test script repository.”

In simpler terms, a test harness is a small program that executes the test scripts from repository and reports the results. A good piece on basics of test harness can also be found on testingreflections.com where test harness is defined as:

“A test harness, at its most simple, is just that—a system to handle the elements you’ll repeat each time you write a test.”