Some test procedures can require several hours or more to complete because the procedures contain a significant number of tests or contain a small number of tests that take a long time to complete. To help diagnose issues early in such test systems, you can generate and display a partial report while the test sequence executes instead of waiting until the end of execution to generate and display the report.

You can configure TestStand to generate a report on-the-fly to support such test sequences. NI benchmarks show that if you want to view the entire report as the testing progresses, an on-the-fly ASCII report provides the best throughput. If you do not need to see the entire report, all reports generated on-the-fly when you enable the Only Display Latest Results option on the Contents tab of the Report Options dialog box provide approximately equivalent throughput. Because you cannot generate the report associated with raw results until after the execution completes, you cannot use the raw results file format to generate and view the report during the test sequence execution.

Test sequences that specify a large number of steps generate very large reports. Generating and viewing a large report while executing a test sequence can cause significant performance issues. Therefore, when you generate reports on-the-fly, NI recommends that you enable the Only Display Latest Results option.

Recommended Report Options

The following table summarizes the recommended options you configure in the Report Options dialog box when you optimize for generating and viewing the report during test sequence execution:

Report Option Value for a Sequence with Few Steps and Long Execution Time Value for a Sequence with Many Steps
Format ASCII, ATML, HTML, XML (best to worst) ASCII, ATML, HTML, XML (best to worst)
Asynchronous N/A N/A
On-the-Fly Report True True
Only Display Latest Results False True

Tradeoffs

Consider the impact to the following requirements when you optimize for generating and viewing the report during test sequence execution:

  • Maximize test system throughput
  • Interoperate with other processes and systems
  • Support post-failure information recovery
  • Generate reports immediately for the current UUT before testing the next UUT