I am new to this automated testing idea. I am also new to web and UI design, having spent the past 20 years programming embedded communications devices. So I am trying to get a handle on how to design a test process and implement that design with Selenium. Once these are working, they will be passed on to QA for their use. Currently we do all web page testing manually.

First, I need to learn how generate functional tests of web pages containing data retrieved from one or more databases. For example, one page lists transactions for a debit account on an external system. It defaults to this month, with a drop down box to select any of the previous five months. How do I verify that the data presented for each month is correct? Second, that test is a functional test during this build cycle, but becomes a regression test during subsequent cycles. What should I save this time to compare with during subsequent tests? Third, is there any way to validate RegE compliance for these statements?

Platforms:

Workstation - WinXP Pro, Perl 5.10 (Camelbox), Java(TM) SE Runtime Environment (build 1.6.0_03-b05), Se Beta 1, FIrefox 2.0.0.20.

Web Server: RHEL 5, Apache 2, PHP 5, PostgreSQL 8.2.

Application server: Win 2k3, Proprietary Applications, Sybase ASA or Oracle.

P.S. If anyone has suggestions on how to verify PCI compliance, ala Visa and MasterCard requirements, with Se scripts, I would appreciate those as well.