Praktisches & Grundsätzliches zur Informatik

Test, Driver Architecture, Automation Tools, Most effective Team Structure, Ranorex, QTP

Testautomation — How to design Team and Drivers

Nearly three years I did test and test automation. The systems I tested and saw continually regression-tested (from a Black Box point of view, i.e. via GUI) were two very large very large ones.

The most important facts I learned were the following:

Nice and not so nice Test Automation Tools

Test automation tools, at least those meant to drive the application under test via its GUI, work by first recording and then playing back: Recording is generating a script which then must be enhanced by a programmer to contain checking code (most of this code I recommend to have in a separate program or script, but that's another issue: see above).

So far so good. But regression testing is a kind of test where the system under test is constantly changing in detail (a moving target). This implies that scripts recorded even recently may not work for very long — they need to be adopted according to how the application did change.

Re-recording these scripts on a regular basis

What actually occurs is: When the next version of your application is ready for test, you simply try to re-run all your drivers. Some of them will break down because the application did change. Correcting these drivers can be quite difficult if your test automation tool is e.g. Ranorex (where the driver's code is not in one file only) but turns out to be easy if your tool is e.g. HP Quick Test (QTP).

A third category of test recording tools is what I call too naive: They do not support to write, during test runs, files showing data feeded to or produced by the triggered application. Doing non-trivial checks is then very hard or even impossible. Fabasoft app.test Studio and TOSCA seem to be tools in this class.

It is my firm believe that

Tools without a programming (better: a scripting) interface are near to worthless:

They do not allow non-trival verification of what the application under test is actually doing.




stw4399TAGUITools . Automation . GUINews?

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