QuickTest or WinRunner - Essay Example

Running Head: QUICKTEST OR WINRUNNER QuickTest or WinRunner Should we Switchover to QuickTest Professional Thao Tran University of Houston - Victoria Abstract I had left abstract as you had advised in your message. General Overview Mercury QuickTest Professional (QTP) and WinRunner (WR) are automated functional Graphical User Interface (GUI) testing tools created by the HP quality management and performance testing solutions subsidiary Mercury Interactive (now HP Software) based in Sunnyvale, CA, with R&D in Israel (Mar, 2007, p. 2) that allow the automation of user actions on a web or client based computer application. WinRunner was introduced in 1995 while QuickTest Pro has been available since about 2002 (LoPorto, n. d., p. 3). The Software Test & Performance 2006, Tester's Choice Grand Award winner (Award-Winning QA by Any Other Name Would Smell as Sweet, 2007, para.1), Mercury QuickTest Professional is a next-generation automated testing solution. It provides the industry's best solution for functional test and regression test automation - addressing every major software application and environment including next-generation development technologies such as Web Services, Macromedia Flex, .NET, J2EE, and ERP/CRM applications (Mercury Functional Testing: Mercury QuickTest Professional , 2006, p.2). Mercury QuickTest Professional uses the Keyword-driven testing concept to radically simplify test creation and maintenance. Its unique Keyword-driven testing approach enables the test automation experts to have full access to the underlying test and object properties, via an integrated scripting and debugging environment that is round- trip synchronized with the Keyword View (Mercury QuickTest Professional, 2007, para. 2). It enables you to deploy higher- quality applications faster, cheaper, and with less risk. It works hand-in-hand with Mercury Business Process Testing to bring non-technical subject matter experts into the quality process in a meaningful way. Plus, it empowers the entire testing team to create sophisticated test suites with minimal training (Quality Assurance, n. d., p. 3). Over the past decade, WinRunner is one of the market leaders when it comes to automated functional testing tools. WinRunner utilizes a "Graphical User Interface (GIU) Map" approach to create an automated test script. Since each object within a test has a minimum set of physical attributes that make it unique (Korhonen, 2000, p. 26) hence WinRunner recognizes objects like buttons and edit fields by their unique properties.It can also be used to create automated scripts for applications created using a range of technologies, including Java, Siebel, PowerBuilder, and Delphi (Mercury WinRunner, 2006, p. 2). It has gain an enormous popularity and thousands of developers has gathered under its flag who have improved their skills in this product over the years of their professional careers. With Mercury WinRunner, the organization reduces testing time by automating repetitive tasks, optimizes testing efforts by covering diverse environments with a single testing tool and maximizes return on investment through modifying and reusing test scripts as the application evolves (Quality Assurance, n. d., pp. 1-3). Although WinRunner has proved to be an efficient testing tool and it has become an industry standard as functional testing technology, yet continuous technological development scenario has highlighted its few short comes or limitations over its applications. In a number of applications, WinRunner has fallen short to recognize a lot of texts, graphics and drop-down lists hence failed to make sure that all of the company's software 100% error-free. To be able to check all of the texts, graphics and drop-down lists, developers have to do more work. This really degrades the automation testers efficiency and makes it impossible for automation testers to work around it without the help from developers. With the introduction of Mercury QuickTest Professional in 2002, there has been a debate going on over the choice and appropriateness of which testing tool would be better to use and lots of companies eager to know "What's the difference between WinRunner and QuickTest Pro" and "If they are both functional testing tools from the same company, then which one of the tools should we use" (LoPorto, n. d., p. 3). In next coming pages an attempt is made to address these issues to understand the basics about the tools in order to make a better choice. WinRunner vs QuickTest Professional It has past quite time that Mercury QuickTest Professional (QTP) and WinRunner (WR) have been used by hundreds of audience including performance and network engineers, IT managers and directors, analysts, developers and testers at client sites around the world as efficient automated functional Graphical User Interface (GUI) testing tools, hence they have solid real-world experience in implementing these testing tools. Although both testing tools have remarkable results yet following few observations reveal some important points to ponder and to make a better choice. For a better overview of different features and environmental coverage, please go through the tabulated data given in Appendix A. Both WinRunner and QuickTest Professional offer many common features and also share many common environments. Although both WinRunner and QuickTest Professional require same operating systems yet Windows NT 4.0 Service Pack 6a is not supported when WinRunner is connected to Quality Center. Also QuickTest Pro and WinRunner 8.2 is supported on Windows XP Service Pack 2 only if DEP-data execution prevention and NX-no execution is not activated (Mercury WinRunner System Requirements, 2007, para. 2). Same condition applies for QuickTest Professional too. Another important system requirement feature difference between WinRunner and QuickTest Professional is their minimum memory requirement. For QuickTest Professional 9.2 a minimum of 512 MB of RAM is recommended compared to 128 MB of RAM required for WinRunner (Mercury QuickTest Professional System Requirements, 2007, para. 3). WinRunner control scripts are written in TSL (Test Script Language). It is based on C language syntax. Since the understanding of C language requires a sound technical background hence testers, who do not have a technical background, they feel quite uneasy with having to always look at code while QuickTest Pro uses an icon-based view of the script called "Tree View". This user friendly script is very easy to get used for both technical and non-technical people. QuickTest Pro also offers an option to technical user. They can look directly at code, and program by switching over to the "Expert View" and using VBScript. Since QuickTest Pro uses Microsoft VBScript which is a very versatile programming language with a lots of capabilities and available resources contrary to WinRunner TSL which is very restrictive proprietary language of Mercury with limited available resources. Data Table integration, Data Driven Testing, Parameterization and Capturing various output values is much easier and simpler with more options in QuickTest Pro than WinRunner. QuickTest Pro's Active Screen approach for script enhancement is typically easier and faster than WinRunner's navigate back approach to application location. In Active Screen approach windows and objects in application are captured for later use and using a "point and click" capability one can easily interface with objects, their definitions and create checkpoints after having recorded a script (LoPorto, n. d., p. 5). Winrunner is designed more for testing rich desktop and web applications, not WebForms of Microsoft's .NET applications. For that applications Quick Test Pro version 8 has greater advantage over WinRunner and it can competently take over WinRunner. (Mar, 2007, p.7). Although Mercury QC, formerly called Test Director can invoke tests remotely, according to a custom schedule when client machines have network access control set to "User Level" yet WinRunner has no ties either to Mercury products Topaz or SiteScope. Topaz is used to measure network performance while SiteScope collects measurements on machines (Mar, 2007, p. 3). Conclusion From above discussion it is obvious that although Mercury QuickTest Professional and Mercury WinRunner are Mercury Quality Center core products for enterprise-wide functional and regression testing yet Mercury QuickTest Professional has greater versatility compared to Mercury WinRunner. That is why Mercury Quality product developers recommend to use QuickTest Pro unless for some reason you have to use WinRunner due to an unsupported environment not existing in QuickTest Pro (LoPorto, n. d., p. 5). References Award-Winning QA by Any Other Name Would Smell as Sweet. (2007). Retrieved May 9, 2007, from http://uk.mercurybtonews.com/e_article000722849.cfmx=b11,0,w Mar, W. (2007). WinRunner.info. Retrieved May 10, 2007, from http://www.wilsonmar.com/1winrun.htm Mercury QuickTest Professional. (2006). Retrieved May 8, 2007, from http://www.mercury.com/us/pdf/product/datasheets/DS-0985-0306-qtp.pdf Mercury QuickTest Professional System Requirements. (2007). Retrieved May 8, 2007, from, http://www.mercury.com/us/products/quality-center/functional- testing/quicktest-professional/ MERCURY FUNCTIONAL TESTING: MERCURY QUICKTEST PROFESSIONAL. (2006). Retrieved May 10, 2007, from http://www.mercury.com/us/products/quality-center/functional-testing/quicktest- professional/faq.html MERCURY WINRUNNER. (2006). Retrieved May 8, 2007, from http://www.mercury.com/us/pdf/product/datasheets/DS-0985-0306-winrunner.pdf Mercury WinRunner System Requirements. (2007). Retrieved May 8, 2007, from http://www.mercury.com/us/products/quality-center/functional-testing/winrunner/ Korhonen, J., Salmela, M. & Jermo Kalaoja. (2000). The reuse of test for configured software products. VVT PUBLICATION 406. Retrieved May 8, 2007, from http://www.inf.vtt.fi/pdf/publications/2000/P406.pdf LoPorto, S. (n. d.). WinRunner vs. QuickTest Pro Quick Comparison. Retrieved May 10, 2007, from www.asi-test.com/WinRunner_vs_QTP.htm - 112k Quality Assurance. (n. d.). Retrieved May 10, 2007, from http://www.tulipsoftusa.com/training-quality-assurance.html APPENDIX The table 1 gives a view of environment coverage of both testing tools while table 2 compares the important features found in both WinRunner and QuickTest Professional (LoPorto, n. d., p. 4). . No. Environments WinRunner QuickTest Pro 1 Web-Related Environments IE, Netscape, AOL IE, Netscape, AOL JDK, Java Foundation Classes, AWT JDK, Java Foundation Classes, AWT Symantec Visual Caf Symantec Visual Caf ActiveX Controls ActiveX Controls 2 ERP/CRM Oracle: Jinitiator, 11i, NCA Oracle: Jinitiator, 11i, NCA Baan SAP PeopleSoft Windows Siebel 7.x Siebel 5, 6 GUI Clients PeopleSoft 8.x Oracle GUI 3 Custom Client Server Windows Windows C++/C C++/C Visual Basic Visual Basic PowerBuilder Forte Delphi Centura Stingray SmallTalk 4 Operating Systems Windows 98, 2000, NT, ME, XP Windows 98, 2000, NT, ME, XP 5 Legacy 3270, 5250 Emulators 3270, 5250 Emulators VT100 VT100 6 .Net WinForms WebForms .Net controls 7 Web Services XML, HTTP WSDL, SOAP J2EE, .Net 8 Multimedia RealAudio/Video Flash Table: 1 Environments shared by WinRunner and QuickTest Professional S. No. Features WinRunner QuickTest Pro 1 Record/Replay ODBC & Excel Connectivity ODBC & Excel Connectivity 2 Code Editor & Debugger Recovery Manager Recovery Manager 3 Shared Object Repository Rapid Object Import Rapid Object Import 4 Numerous Checkpoints Analog Analog 5 Function Generator Database Integration Run Wizard 6 Run Wizard TSL 7 MDI 8 ActiveScreen TestGuard 9 Tree View ScriptFusion 10 Data Table VBScript Table: 2 Features found in WinRunner and QuickTest Professional Read More