Configuring Microsoft Excel or CSV Data Sources

CAUTION:
Excel worksheets using password protection can not be configured as data sources for Silk Central. Turn off a worksheet's password protection to use it as data source for data-driven testing. The concatenated length of all primary keys may not exceed 255 characters in length for Excel and CSV.

To configure a Microsoft Excel or CSV data source:

  1. In the menu, click Project:<Project Name> > Project Settings .
  2. Click the Data Sources tab. The Data Sources page displays, listing all of the data sources that have been created for the system.
  3. Click New Data Source to open the New Data Source dialog box.
  4. Type a Name for the data source.
  5. From the Data source type list box, select MS Excel to configure a Microsoft Excel data source, or select CSV to configure a CSV data source.
  6. From the Source control profile list box, select the pre-configured source control profile that hosts your data file. For detailed information regarding the configuration of source control profiles, see Source Control Profiles.
  7. Click Browse to open the Select Source Control Path dialog box. Browse to and select a data source file of the selected type in your source control path.
  8. Optional: MS Excel only. If you are working with an Excel spreadsheet that includes multiple worksheets, and you want to narrow down the data source to specific worksheets, you can browse to and select specific worksheets for inclusion. To do this:
    1. Click [...] next to the Worksheet filter field.
    2. The Select Worksheet Filter dialog box displays. Select the worksheets that you want included as your data source.
    3. Click OK.
  9. Optional: Key column selection is used by tests to define which worksheet columns within a data source are used as primary key. This is helpful if your data source will undergo edits, for example when you add or remove rows within a worksheet. Even if your data source is edited, tests will still be able to identify which columns or rows should be used. Tests created from data-driven data sources use key column values in their names, rather than column numbers.
    Note: MS Excel only: If the data source includes multiple worksheets, only columns with identical names are available to be defined as key columns.

    To configure a key column:

    1. Click [...] next to the Key column field.
    2. The Select Key Column dialog box displays. Select a column from the column list that is to act as a key column.
    3. Click OK.
  10. Click OK on the New Data Source dialog box.
Parent topic: Data Sources for Data-Driven Tests
Related concepts
Source Control Profiles