Test configurations essentially unbind the data from the test, making the test generic and facilitating the test's reuse. Using test configurations, you can:

• Share common data sources across different tests.

• Test various use-cases, each time with a different set of data.

  Example: A test configuration can specify a subset of data or a run-time environment that the test should use.

  You may want to check the same test in a Windows environment and again in a UNIX environment. In this case, you can define one test with two test configurations. The parameter values for the Windows configuration would contain Windows-specific values (for example, backslashes in a path name) while the UNIX configuration would contain UNIX-specific values (for example, forward slashes in a path name).

For conceptual information about the ways you can associate data with a test configuration, see Data for Test Configurations.

Test configurations provide finer granularity for requirement coverage. Instead of covering each requirement only at the level of the test, you can link a requirement to a specific test configuration.