Test Fixtures & Interface Adaptors

What is a Test Fixture?

Overview

A Test Fixture is a dedicated hardware environment used to consistently test some item, device, or piece of software. Test fixtures can be found when testing electronics, software and physical devices.

In testing electronic equipment such as circuit boards, electronic components, and chips, a test fixture is a device or setup designed to hold the device under test (DUT) in place and allow it to be tested by being subjected to controlled electronic test signals.

Test signals are applied using gold-plated, spring-loaded test probes sometimes referred t o as a ‘bed of nails’ testing.

Advantages

The advantage of a test fixture is that it allows for tests to be repeatable for greater integrity since each test is always starting with the same setup. Test fixtures also ease test code design by allowing the developer to separate methods into different functions and reuse each function for other tests. Further, test fixtures per-configure tests into a known initial state instead of working with whatever was left from a previous test run. A disadvantage is that it could lead to duplication of test fixtures if using in-line setup.

Test Phases

1

Set-up

2

Exercise

Interact with the system under test

3

Verify

Determine whether the expected outcome has been obtained

4

Tear down

Return to the original state

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