Why File Checkpoints Fail

Files Contain Variable Fragments

Files are Incomplete

Verification may fail if the checked file includes some extended information that changes from one test run to another.

For example, report files often include date and time of the report and the report ID that are different for each generated report.

Another example: if you verify a Word document generated during the test run, verification will fail even if the major information in the actual and the baseline files remains the same. The cause of the failure is that the actual and the baseline files include different specific details added by Microsoft Word during the saving process.

If the file you want to verify contains altering fragments, byte-to-byte verification is ineffective. To make your file checkpoint be passed successfully, you can do the following:

• Specify the amount of allowed dissimilarities between files.

  If the files are slightly different, use the recommended value of the AllowedDifference parameter. When the checkpoint fails, TestComplete automatically calculates the parameter and displays it in the Details panel of the test log. After you specify the recommended value in the checkpoint, the files will be treated as equal while performing the next verification.

• Exclude variable fragments from verification.

  If the file contains altering fragments, find these fragments and exclude them from comparison. To find such fragments, you can use the TestComplete File Comparison Results panel in which differences are highlighted with different colors.

  To verify files ignoring the found variable fragments, use regular expressions. For information on how to do this, see Verifying Files With Variable Parts.

File verification can also fail if the actual file is engaged in another process while being verified.

For example, this can happen if there is an operation that imports data into an actual file right before the test performs a checkpoint. In this case, at the moment verification starts, some data may still be imported into the file and the checkpoint will fail.

As a solution, you can delay the test execution until the end of the importing operation. To learn how to delay test runs at some point, see Delaying Test Execution.