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Thursday, September 3, 2009

Test Partner

TestPartner - Introduction

IT managers charged with ensuring application quality are confronted with a number of critical business challenges:

  • Verify that applications function as expected and fulfill business requirements

  • Test multiple heterogeneous application technologies

  • Meet ever-more-rapid release schedules

  • Achieve the right balance between risk and quality.

If that weren't enough, IT struggles with limited resources, hard deadlines that squeeze testing cycles and late-breaking requirement changes.

In the face of these business demands, TestPartner's functional testing capabilities accelerate testing and enable successful application delivery outcomes on-time, at a lower cost, with higher quality than ever before. TestPartner achieves these results through a tiered approach to testing that enables developers, quality experts, and non-technical application users to collaborate and test more in the time available.

TestPartner's visual, contextual approach to capturing business processes empowers non-technical application users to participate in the testing process. At the same time, TestPartner provides expert testers and software developers with access to Visual Basic for Applications, allowing them to solve even the most complex testing challenges. This flexibility and focus on usability allows quality teams to produce positive results even with minimal training.

TestPartner enables IT to:



  1. Leverage non-technical as well as experienced testers to test applications more thoroughly in the time available

  2. Collaborate throughout the software development lifecycle, resulting in higher team efficiency and greater project effectiveness

  3. Automate regression testing to quicken acceptance of application patches, service packs, and other regular updates

  4. Clearly and unambiguously document test results, accelerating the identification and resolution of application issues

  5. Understand the results of testing, enabling confident delivery of applications that meet requirements and provide the expected business value

  6. Use test results to facilitate test maintenance, providing improved return on the test automation investment
  7. Build quality into applications earlier in the life cycle, leading to lower development and maintenance costs

  8. Accelerate quality efforts for a broad range of technology platforms, including Web, .NET, Java, SAP, Oracle and many other distributed Windows-based applications.

TestPartner's value is further enhanced through its tight integration with Compuware's Test Management solution, which improves application delivery by providing IT with the ability to more effectively assess and balance risk, cost, and schedule. TestPartner is also an integral component within Quality Management, which provides IT with the ability to control, measure, manage and continuously improve the delivery of higher quality applications. Quality Management's reporting and real-time insight into project quality status results in informed quality decisions, and allows IT to deploy applications with greater confidence.


TestPartner - Product Preview

Automated, repeatable testing with TestPartner TestPartner is an automated testing tool that accelerates functional testing and facilitates the delivery of business-critical applications.

With TestPartner, you can more rapidly validate applications before going live, verify that application updates don't introduce regressions or even test nightly builds with automated smoke tests. TestPartner offers a storyboard-based visual approach to testing that lets application users confidently capture test scenarios. VBA scripting is available to enable advanced users to meet even the most demanding test cases. You build test assets earlier in the development life cycle, test more thoroughly and deploy applications with confidence.

TestPartner's broad environment support means that enterprises with heterogeneous environments can be confident about easily validating Microsoft, Java, web, SAP, Oracle and many other distributed technologies with speed and consistency.


TestPartner - Build tests without programming

Unlike testing tools that require users to understand a programming language, TestPartner's Visual Navigator makes testing accessible to even novice users, allowing virtually anyone to be immediately productive.


TestPartner - Build tests without programming

Unlike testing tools that require users to understand a programming language, TestPartner's Visual Navigator makes testing accessible to even novice users, allowing virtually anyone to be immediately productive.

Within the Visual Navigator, you access panes that provide a preview of each screen being tested, the pertinent test steps for each and a storyboard view that ties it all together. As each step is selected, the corresponding control within the screen preview is highlighted, which clearly defines the automation context.
Additionally, each test step has related properties that can be modified by the user or even populated via a data file to facilitate fully data-driven testing. Ultimately, this approach allows application users—who are intimately familiar with the application under test, but often lack the technical expertise to use automated testing tools—to comfortably and confidently capture business transactions, verify the proper functionality is tested and assist in updating the test when inaccuracies are found or the application changes.


TestPartner - Modify and customize tests

In addition to capturing a screenshot of each application window, which is displayed within the screen preview pane,

TestPartner records detailed information about the controls and properties for each screen. This means you can easily augment or modify an existing test based upon the information already captured.

For example, you can:



  • insert new steps directly from the screen preview (or the application under test)

  • modify existing tests to perform different or additional steps
  • change the action performed (e.g., replace single-click with a double-click) or the data being input

  • add verifications that weren't inserted during the initial record session

  • do all of this without having to re-record against the original application.

This "offline editing" capability is especially valuable for modern "workflow-driven" applications

, where you might spend several minutes or more simply returning to the point where you can capture additional data or record new actions. With TestPartner, as long as the underlying application data hasn't changed, you achieve higher productivity by simply going right to the pertinent screen and making changes and additions as needed.


TestPartner - Understand and document tests and results unambiguously

TestPartner removes abstraction to give users a better understanding of what the test should automate and the actual results. You no longer have to guess. You can see exactly what each step intends to automate.


Similarly, when a test exposes an application problem, the visual test results are much more efficient and effective in leading to a positive identification and resolution. You no longer have to struggle for hours to reproduce issues live.

Additionally, tests can be printed to provide external documents for manual testing, user documentation and training, or archived for process compliance and auditing. Similarly, test results can be printed to provide reports that can be reviewed at meetings, aid with troubleshooting or provide evidence supporting process compliance.


TestPartner - Build in test "intelligence" with logic designers

To test applications thoroughly, it's important to do more than simply record and playback.

TestPartner comes with built-in wizards and logic designers that make it easy to build and execute sophisticated test cases.

These wizards and logic designers are instantly accessible through the Logic Toolbox or via right-click menus. Users can successfully fulfill even complex test cases by adding logic that allows:

  1. quick creation of data-driven tests

  2. testing for the presence of text, images, properties, etc.

  3. steps to occur only when specific conditions are met

  4. creation and use of variable data

  5. repetition of test steps

  6. testing and verification of actual and expected results

  7. synchronization of the test with the application being tested

  8. automatic error handling

  9. and more.

TestPartner - Accelerate test maintenance

One of the biggest challenges with automated testing is maintaining the test assets over time.

When the application changes, the test cases that correspond to that functionality need to be updated. TestPartner simplifies this effort in two ways.

First, you can view results with the Visual Navigator, TestPartner's built-in screen preview that shows both the original test screen and the screen that was captured at playback, allowing you to identify critical changes in the application immediately.

Second, TestPartner's one-click Update Screen feature allows application changes to be instantly captured into the visual test. For example, if you determined that a new field was added to an existing screen within the application under test, you could select the Update Screen to capture the new screen definition (along with associated properties) without having to re-record the test. By enabling you to spend less time on test maintenance and more time on testing the application thoroughly, TestPartner improves your return on investment.


TestPartner - VBA scripting

TestPartner's visual tests provide an approach to testing that requires no programming experience, and offers more advanced capabilities for expert users via Microsoft Visual Basic for Applications.


The availability of VBA-based tests means expert users can work at whatever level is best suited for a given project or test—use an entirely visual approach, integrate VBA routines with visual tests to enable customization and complex text cases, or work entirely with VBA.


TestPartner's VBA and visual testing features are designed to work closely in conjunction, so testers can call VBA routines at any point within a visual test, passing and returning data as necessary to fulfill the test case.VBA's rich feature-set, which includes broad debugging capabilities and Microsoft auto-completing IntelliSense™, makes users more efficient and productive than with proprietary programming languages or other feature-poor development environments.


TestPartner - VBA scripting

TestPartner's visual tests provide an approach to testing that requires no programming experience, and offers more advanced capabilities for expert users via Microsoft Visual Basic for Applications.


The availability of VBA-based tests means expert users can work at whatever level is best suited for a given project or test—use an entirely visual approach, integrate VBA routines with visual tests to enable customization and complex text cases, or work entirely with VBA.


TestPartner's VBA and visual testing features are designed to work closely in conjunction, so testers can call VBA routines at any point within a visual test, passing and returning data as necessary to fulfill the test case.VBA's rich feature-set, which includes broad debugging capabilities and Microsoft auto-completing IntelliSense™, makes users more efficient and productive than with proprietary programming languages or other feature-poor development environments.


TestPartner - Collaborate to communicate and operate more effectively

As test teams get increasingly distributed and incorporate application users, testers and developers, clear and effective communication becomes increasingly important.

To that end, TestPartner includes a team-oriented collaboration feature that allows users to flag and describe particular items of interest within a test or test result, and assign to another user as applicable. This allows work scenarios where, for example:

  1. An application user successfully captures a business process, and then flags and assigns it to a quality expert for inclusion within the test framework.

  2. A member of the quality team reproduces a defect, flags the point at which the problem occurs and assigns it to a developer for investigation.

  3. The test result appears to show a change in the application under test. A member of the quality team assigns the result to an application user to verify whether this is the expected behavior.

TestPartner Program

Transition Networks's Test Partner Program is a new kind of product testing program.

The Test Partner Program consists of our Technical Support staff and select Transition customers working together to insure that product supportability is designed into every Transition product. We do this by providing our Test Partner Program participants with final releases of products, and then working closely with the Test Partner to find ways to enhance/improve the product.

Through Test Partners, Transition is able to isolate and resolve a problem, or define and determine the scope of a new feature or function, resulting in a win-win situation for Transition, our resellers and our customers.

Test Partners are not expected to execute a laborious product acceptance test plan. We recognize that a Test Partner's resources may be limited. Test Partners can test the product any way they want to. The challenge is simple - break it if you can. We promise that all problems reported by a Test Partner will be Priority #1!

Our Technical Support Department qualifies potential Test Partners on the basis of robustness of their networks, client count, eagerness to participate in the program, and the networking expertise of the Test Partner's technical contact person. Most importantly, the Test Partner must possess a "partner", rather than a "customer" mentality.

Transition's Test Partner Program requirements are few, but important. Participants must:

  1. provide a diagram of their network illustrating backbones, device and client count.

  2. capture a performance baseline before installation so that a comparison can be made.

  3. give this testing a reasonable amount of priority.

  4. provide as much detail as practical when reporting problems.

  5. allow Transition's Marketing Department an interview so that the prestige of their opinion can be shared.

Events

Events are unscheduled occurrences or conditions to which you want the target application to respond in a specified manner. Test Partner supports two categories of events: Wait and Whenever.

A Wait event tells Test Partner to wait for a specified occurrence before proceeding. Wait events are useful in situations where you cannot anticipate the amount of time a response will take. An example of a Wait event would be waiting for a system login prompt. When your script is running against a network-based application that requires the user

to log in, the amount of time it takes for the login prompt to display may vary. To account for this variance, you can insert a Wait event that instructs your script to wait for the login prompt before proceeding to type a username and password.

A Whenever event tells Test Partner to watch for a specific occurrence and, if it occurs, perform a special set of steps. Whenever events are useful for trapping unexpected error conditions during a test run. For example, you can include events in your scripts to recognize when the connection to the server has been interrupted by a communications error or a network system message has been received, so that the script can report or work around the problem. In a script, Test Partner automatically inserts the Script_Whenever function by default to handle the whenever event. If a whenever event is inserted into a module, shared module, or class module, you must customize the whenever event handler code. Test Partner supports the following types of Events:

i) Bitmap Event:--

A bitmap event detects the presence, absence, or state of a graphic in a window.

ii) Date/Time Event:--

date/Time events enable you to define a date or time condition. Test Partner recognizes the event by monitoring the internal clock of the computer on which it and the target application are running.

iii) Key Event:--

Watch for the entry of a particular keystroke combination by the user. You can use key events to:

  • Build your own “hotkeys” to make Test Partner perform an action whenever the hotkey is used.
  • Interrupt a script to take manual control of the target application.
  • Pause a script until a particular key is used.
  • Prevent certain keys from being entered.
iv) Menu Events:--

Watch for when a particular menu item is selected by the user.

v) Mouse Events:--

Watch for when one of the mouse buttons is clicked or released in a certain window.

vi) Screen Events:--

A screen event detects the presence or absence of text in a window. The most common use of screen events is to synchronize with host-based applications and to detect error messages.

vii) Window Events:--

A window event detects an action on a window; for example, its creation, destruction, movement, or its existence.

Data Driven Test:--

The Test Partner Active Data Test Creation wizard provides a non-programmatic way to create data-driven tests. Such tests are useful for testing form-based applications. Using the wizard, you can record a test, choose the fields you want to include in your data file, then populate the data file itself using a data table.

To create a data test

1. From the Script menu, choose Create Data Test. The Data Test wizard appears.
2. Read the instructions and click Next.
3. Follow the instructions in the Data Layout Assistant for the three steps necessary to define the scope of the test.
4. Enter a name for the Data Table.
5. Exclude any fields you do not want to include in the test by unchecking the Use checkbox and click Next.
6. Read the instructions and click Finish.


TestPartner shows the Data Table, which includes a column for each field you defined and one row of data. The data table also includes a column labelled Results Script, to specify a script to be run after the data driven test.


To modify the data table.

1. If you have just recorded a new data test and the data table is open, proceed to step 3.


2. To modify an existing data test, select Modify Data Table on the Script menu and choose the data table you want to change.


3. To add rows and populate the table with test data, right-click on the empty row labelled END ( or any other row) and select Insert on the context menu. Test Partner inserts a new row above the selected row.


4. Enter test data into the cells of the new row.


5. Alternatively, right-click the empty row and choose Import. You can import data from a tab-delimited text (.TXT) or comma-delimited (.CSV) file to populate the cells of the data table. If you select the END row in the table, TestPartner will add multiple rows if needed to accommodate the data.


6. To delete rows from the table, right-click the row and choose Delete. To delete multiple rows, press the Ctrl or Shift (for contiguous rows) key while selecting rows to delete.


7. To launch another script from the data test, insert the name of the script in the Results Script field in the table at any point(s) at which you want to run the script.


8. When you have finished editing the data table, click Save and Close to exit.