update: Olivier improved upon the proposal and implemented it:

• proposal improvements: OlivierGiroussensTestDataTool
• user guide: OlivierGiroussensDataLoadingScriptUserGuide

test data tool proposal

Requirements

• Aparna and others should be able to create test/example data by hand, so that particular cases can be covered
• Facilitate creating relatively large amounts of data
• Create content items (with OOTB schemas) and item collections

Non-requirements

• We don't need the tool to support the creation of blocks, kinds, or items generally
• We don't need the tool to be able to support references to other existing data, it can create a self-contained data set that depends on the OOTB schema.
• No need to round-trip through the tool, just used for one-time creation of test data.
• Tool does not need to generically support creation of instances of any content item, but can support a well defined list of OOTB Kinds.

Proposal

• Use a spreadsheet tool for data entry
• Generate csv data file from the spreadsheet tool
• Write a python script to populate a repository with the items (from the csv data file)

File Format

• Row of Kind, expected attributes, followed by rows of data
• First column for data row contains # to refer to that item
• Values can contain links to other items using reference #
• Values can contain literal data, data is interpreted as the expected type of the attribute
• For attributes that accept multiple values, list multiple values separated by commas (listed in quotes in a generated csv file)

Example files

• TestData.csv
• TestData.txt
• TestData.xls
• The example isn't complete -- will need to handle mail and stamped variations, for example
• The python script could parse either csv or txt file, whatever is easiest

Collection	displayName
1	Home
2	Work
Note	displayName	collection	createdOn
3	reading list	1, 2	1/11/2005
4	restauraunt recommendations	1	5/5/2005
Task	displayName	collection	dueDate
5	read paper	1	6/25/2005
CalendarEvent	displayName	collection	startTime	anyTime	allDay	duration	reminderTime	location	importance
6	party		7/4/2005			5
EventTask	displayName	collection	startTime	anyTime	allDay	duration	reminderTime
7	meeting	2	6/30/2005	TRUE

Notes on implementation of python script

• Look at osaf/contentmodel/tests as examples (including GenerateItems)
• Look at import/export code as example
• Result of script should be the creation of a test repository that can be checked in and re-used over and over again

Possible improvements

• Make use of spreadsheet features to format spreadsheet for easier reading/data entry
• Spreadsheet features to automatically generate the reference #s
• Some token (e.g. "*") could indicate that the python program should generate appropriate semi-random data for the field
• Shortcuts for usability: e.g. make collection column accept name of collection instead of reference #

I'm sure the implementor of this tool can/will think of other improvements and variations of this proposal, and should feel free to implement them if they are in the spirit of the requirements.