So how do you guys test visual programming languages? These languages include Labview, Simulink, Snaplogic, Slang, etc. I ask because I’m working on improving the testing suite we use at my job for Snaplogic. The way we currently lest is we have a suite of pipelines that have certain snaps and we just run those pipelines and look for errors in a testing environment every release.
What I’m really trying to figure out is how to run Functional Tests (unit, integration, system) and Non-Functional Tests (security, performance). In a language such as Python this can be straight forward but in a visual language or a service offered by another company then it is a bit more difficult.
I am thinking of creating a custom test suite using the modules used in our pipelines and using Python to generate JSON and SQL data. Does anyone do something similar?
I was actually offered a Bachelor thesis topic by a company to write a test bench for a product in LabView.
From what they told me and my other engineering experience I’d suggest going with an approach similar to what’s used with HDLs. For unit tests create test benches in the language itself which call the functions you want to test with a predefined input (e.g. from a file) and then analyse and save the output.
You can extend this to obtaining other information as well, but tbh I’ll bet it’s still gonna be a pain.
Hope that helps at least a little.