Yes, it is about capture/replay again.
I decided to start my automation tool reviews with TestPartner 6 for two reasons - the first is that it is the UI automation tool that I am currently using on my project. The second reason is because the 'Visual Tests' (also called 'Visual Navigator') feature, introduced with the last major release of TestPartner, supposedly "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". The quoted text comes from the product review on the site of Compuware. With TestPartner 6 they are basically trying to catch up with the competition, because HP/Mercury QuickTest Professional (QTP) had this feature first - you record your UI actions and what is created is not code, but descriptive and supposedly less frightening to non-technical people list of entries in a table.
I do not actually use this feature and if you have read my previous post you know why, but I came up with this simple scenario to test how it works overal:
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Open Gmail -
Log-in -
Go to 'Compose Mail'
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Enter some text in the mail body -
Center the text, using the toolbar button -
Click ‘Save Now’ to save the email as draft -
Go to the 'Drafts' folder -
Click on the draft email you just created -
Use the features of the test tool to check that the contents of the text in the email body are the same as entered -
Discard the draft message -
Log-out
I decided to use Gmail as a test application, because I wanted to challenge the tool a little by using some AJAX instead of static HTML and also because almost everyone is "intimately familiar" with Gmail. The scenario is very short and I think that it is reasonable to expect that automation tools should be able to handle well this level of complexity.
I recorded the sequence with TestPartner. In the screenshot below you will see how the recorded script looks like:
(click image to enlarge)
It basically borrows from QTP a lot – for each step of the recording you see a ‘Screen Preview’. The steps are shown as a sequence in the so called ‘Storyboard’ and the currently selected step is shown enlarged in the preview. This is not just a screenshot, but contains the metadata for the UI objects in the application at this particular moment. It is a little like having the real application in front of you at each step and can be nice in case you want to change something little in the middle of a long test.
To the right of the preview you will see the table with the recorded test steps. The descriptions are verbose like Click the text ‘Sign In’.
Using the ‘Logic Toolbox’ to the right you can insert control flow constructs like loops and If statements, using a series of wizards. You can also insert checks to verify things (like in step 9 in my sequence) and add additional UI interactions.
I am a little skeptical about the whole idea, because to me it seems that if you can handle this king of wizard-assisted programming, then you can also learn to write code and in the long run you will be happier in terms of your efficiency if you do so.
I wanted to replay the script without any changes in the test environment first. I expected this to work, but afterwards wanted to see if the recorded script would manage to execute successfully if I have other draft emails in the folder (with other subjects and body texts). My intention was to check how well the tool chooses which properties of the UI elements to use for their identification.
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