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TestComplete 5 Gets Closer to Automated QA


By Edward J. Correia
December 19, 2006 — 
Before speaking with AutomatedQA last week about TestComplete 5, the latest installment of its test automation tool for .NET, Web and Windows apps, I must admit that I wasn't expecting much. I had heard that version 5 added support for Vista and WPF, Firefox and IE 7. No great shakes.

But after speaking with Drew Wells, AutomatedQA's vice president of product development, I'm glad I took the call. The tool, which began shipping last week for US$999 per seat, is capable of something that I think is pretty significant, even though the company doesn't mention it until the third paragraph of its press release.

That capability is a forms generator that lets developers design and deploy custom forms along with their tests to offer guidance and allow testers to input test parameters. I know I'll be getting e-mail from all the other testing tool companies that do this, but what struck me was how AutomatedQA downplayed the feature. It didn't even come up in my conversation with Wells until late in the going, when I asked what else was new.

In the form designer, developers can select from dozens of pre-built controls and customize them for their own testing scenarios and settings. Testers can execute those forms and the corresponding tests using the full TestComplete package or the $89 TestExecute runtime. Wells said the designer offers a point-and-click experience similar to that of Visual Basic.

In addition to testing conventional GUI-based applications, Wells said that forms also can be used to test apps that might not otherwise be capable of automated testing, such as those involving interactive voice response. "For instance, it can be used for testing an outgoing greeting. This would allow [developers] to create a form so they can have a human listen to it to make sure it's OK."

TestComplete can now take advantage of advances in Vista and its Windows Presentation Foundation, which separates presentation and business logic. "For developers, all the UI changes make apps look a lot better, but also make it harder for them to test. It's another thing you have to think about. So we've got the same support for Vista and WPF that we had for XP and legacy apps."

The tool also now can test functionality added to desktop applications using third-party components, such as ComponentOne and Infragistics. Such functionality, Wells said, would otherwise be "invisible to the testing tool. If a developer customizes [the component], it's possible that an automated testing application would see it as one window instead of a named window with the developer's controls. So it can't get to those features to validate them."

By working directly with those and other component vendors, including Borland, Developer Express, Janus Systems, Microsoft and Syncfusion, Wells said that TestComplete is more complete. "We've done our own analysis, so when you test an Infragistics component [for example], you can test it with its own cells and rows." This gives developers the ability to test specific characteristics of those components.

Version 5 also includes improved name mapping, which Wells said simplifies the testing of apps in which multiple functions might be tied to the same component, such as an OK button displayed in five different languages. "They can all be mapped to the same button for testing purposes. That helps a lot for simplifying and normalizing the testing," he said. Mapping templates are included for recognizing Win32, .NET, VCL and other object types.

An upgrade to TestComplete 5 is free for recent purchasers of version 4.x and discounted for others.


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