This pattern shows up repeatedly in FitNesse Acceptance Tests. You need to use several tables on a single page, in order to fully test a given requirement. These tables naturally fall into three categories:

 1 '''Build''': One or more tables to ''Build'' the test data.  These tables are typically based upon a [[!-ColumnFixture-!][<UserGuide.WritingAcceptanceTests.FitFramework.ColumnFixture]] that has the equivalent of a !style_code[valid()] function.  The rows in the table load and save data, and the !style_code[valid()] function returns a boolean indicating whether the data was valid and properly saved.
 2 '''Operate''': A table to operate on the data.  This table is typically based upon a [[!-ColumnFixture-!][<UserGuide.WritingAcceptanceTests.FitFramework.ColumnFixture]] and has always had the equivalent of a !style_code[valid()] function.  The columns specify the arguments of the operation and the !style_code[valid()] function performs the operation and return a boolean to indicate success.
 3 '''Check''': One or more tables to validate the operation.  These fixtures might be of the style [[!-ColumnFixture-!][<UserGuide.WritingAcceptanceTests.FitFramework.ColumnFixture]] or [[!-RowFixture-!][<UserGuide.WritingAcceptanceTests.FitFramework.RowFixture]].  It is in these tables that the real acceptance tests are performed.  The other two tables just set up conditions for the '''Check''' operation.

'''Note''': This pattern is quite similar to the automated [[unit testing pattern][http://weblogs.java.net/pub/wlg/854]] Bill Wake discovered that he calls "'''Arrange, Act, Assert'''," (as you might find in the [[xUnit][http://encyclopedia.thefreedictionary.com/XUnit]] style of unit testing tools:  [[JUnit][http://www.junit.org]] for Java, or [[NUnit][http://www.nunit.org]] for C#). There may be no semantic difference. The syntactic difference is that in unit tests, you can typically express all of your arranging, acting, and asserting as a few lines of code in a single test method. In FitNesse you need a page containing several tables to express all of your building, operating, and checking.

!3 Examples:
|[[Test Bread Crumbs][<FitNesse.SuiteAcceptanceTests.SuiteWikiPageResponderTests.TestBreadCrumbs]]|''Classic BOC fitnesse test for showing that FitNesse deals properly with bold widgets.''|