CRUDCA – Create, Read, Update, Delete, Create Again

I recently tweeted:

A new test sequence: CRUDCA: Create, read, update, delete, create again. — Because sometimes an object can’t be again.

I got some feedback from this, so let’s present the idea in a bit more detail.
Many systems know these 4 basic actions for an object:
  • Create
  • Read
  • Update
  • Delete
That’s where the abbreviation CRUD comes from. In many cases that’s also a rather typical test sequence to check whether the system can handle these actions. — And often it’s also good enough testing.
But sometimes there are more restrictions at work:
  • An object may only be created once and only once. It may be removed, but then not created again.
  • It must be possible to create an object with identical properties again and again.
This is how I came up with ‘CRUDCA’: Create, read, update, delete, create again.
Obviously, it depends on the particular (business) context whether or not it is allowed to create a certain object. The ‘create again’ part covers the action of attempting to create the object. The expected behaviour comes from the requirements or specification of the system.

2 Replies to “CRUDCA – Create, Read, Update, Delete, Create Again”

  1. You’re right — but then: Why stop there? In some cases it may well make sense to go though a lot more steps, entering the area of long sequence testing.

    In my opinion it doesn’t make much sense to name a specific sequence such as CRURDRCARUURRRURURUDCAUUURUR.

    In the concrete situation in my project we expected an object to be ‘re-creatable’ after being deleted, when it wasn’t. This wasn’t a failure that occurred only after a long sequence, but every time we tried to delete an object and then create a new one with the same properties.
    So the problem wasn’t related to a long sequence, in fact CDCA would have been enough (not that this sequence would have made a whole lot of sense business wide in our context).

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