Go gaga over testing

When message box is not sufficient!!

2012-01-24T14:52:00.000+05:30

There are instances when we want to output a large amount of text and we can see just the truncated version in a msgbox. Here is a quick function that can be reused:

Sub Debug2(myText)
' Uncomment the next line to turn off debugging
' Exit Sub
If Not IsObject(objIEDebugWindow) Then
    Set objIEDebugWindow = CreateObject("InternetExplorer.Application")
    objIEDebugWindow.Navigate "about:blank"
    objIEDebugWindow.Visible = True
    objIEDebugWindow.Toolbar = False
    objIEDebugWindow.Width = 200
    objIEDebugWindow.Height = 300
    objIEDebugWindow.Left = 10
    objIEDebugWindow.Top = 10
    Do While objIEDebugWindow.Busy
      WScript.Sleep 100
    Loop
    objIEDebugWindow.Document.Title = "IE Debug Window"
    objIEDebugWindow.Document.Body.InnerHTML = _
                 "" & Now & "
"
End If
objIEDebugWindow.Document.Body.InnerHTML = _
                   objIEDebugWindow.Document.Body.InnerHTML _
                   & myText & "
" & vbCrLf
End Sub

Add a Delay without using sleep / wait

2012-01-23T14:58:00.000+05:30

Lets see a simple code snippet that will add some delay without using the native wait or sleep methods while coding using VBs/QTP/QC

Sub Delay( seconds )
    Dim wshShell
    Set wshShell = CreateObject( "WScript.Shell" )
    wshShell.Run "ping -n " & ( seconds + 1 ) & " 127.0.0.1", 0, True
    Set wshShell = Nothing
End Sub

Happy Coding!

Signs That You’re Dating A Tester

2012-01-05T12:28:00.000+05:30

Your love letters get returned to you marked up with red ink, highlighting your grammar and spelling mistakes.
When you tell him that you won’t change something he has asked you to change, he’ll offer to allow you two other flaws in exchange for correcting this one.
When you ask him how you look in a dress, he’ll actually tell you.
When you give him the “It’s not you, it’s me” breakup line, he’ll agree with you and give the specifics.
He won’t help you change a broken light bulb because his job is simply to report and not to fix.
He’ll keep bringing up old problems that you’ve since resolved just to make sure that they’re truly gone.

Selenium 2.0 / Web Driver and Eclipse

2011-12-29T17:11:00.000+05:30

Steps to set up web driver and Eclipse:

Open Eclipse from the menu choose File, New, Project...
In the folder Java, choose Java Project.
Give project a name, accept the rest of the defaults, and click Next.
Download the latest zip file for selenium frm : http://seleniumhq.org/download/
The latest version right now is : "selenium-java-2.15.0.zip"
Unzip the files into the project that you just created
Back in Eclipse, right click on your project in the Package Explorer and choose Build Path, Configure Build Path.... Choose the Libraries tab
Click Add Jars
Select all of the jars that you just unzipped into the /lib/selenium-jars/ folder and click OK
Choose the primary selenium jar, which in this example is selenium-java-2.15.jar , expand and double-click on Javadoc location. (Enter the location for the Selenium JavaDocs into the Javadoc location path field htttp://selenium.googlecode.com/svn/trunk/docs/api/java/)
Click Ok and u are ready.
Right click on the /src folder in your project and choose New, Package...Give the package a name and click Finish.
Right click on the package and choose New, Class...Give the class a name and accept the other defaults, but make sure that public static void main(String[] args) is checked.
Add code from selenium IDE in JUnit4 (WebDriver) format
Run the test :)

Happy Testing!!!

Install m2eclipse for Indigo

2011-12-29T14:18:00.000+05:30

Eclipse does not have integrated Maven support out of the box. To add the support, I am going to use Maven Integration (m2e).

In Eclipse: Help -> Install New Software…
Type the following URL in field Work with: http://download.eclipse.org/technology/m2e/releases
Click Add…
Give a name for the repository (such as m2eclipse)
Click OK
Select the checkbox Maven Integration for Eclipse
Click Next etc. to move forward and choose to restart Eclipse when prompted

Lets Install Maven

2011-12-28T15:49:00.001+05:30

Steps to Install Maven for Windows XP:

Maven is a Java tool, so you must have Java installed.
Download Maven from http://maven.apache.org/download.html#Installation
Unzip the distribution archive, i.e. apache-maven-3.0.3-bin.zip to the directory you wish to install Maven 3.0.3
Add the M2_HOME environment variable with the value of where you have extracted the zip artchive: C:\Program Files\Apache Software Foundation\apache-maven-3.0.3
Add the M2 environment variable in the user variables with the value %M2_HOME%\bin
Update/create the Path environment variable and append the value %M2% to add Maven available in the command line.
Make sure that JAVA_HOME exists in your user variables or in the system variables and it is set to the location of your JDK, e.g. C:\Program Files\Java\jdk1.5.0_02
Restart the machine
Open a new command prompt and type mvn --version to verify that it is correctly installed

Source: http://maven.apache.org/guides/getting-started/maven-in-five-minutes.html

Happy Testing!!!

Integrate Quality Center with Fitnesse

2011-12-05T12:30:00.002+05:30

I had a hard time trying to figure this out , so here are the steps for the basic integration of these two tools :
The same logic can be used to integrate Quality center and any open source tool:

Set up a VAPI-XP-TEST in quality center that will store the script and the logic to run the same.
The script would then invoke the opensource tool , in our case Fitnesse from test lab in QC.
Once the test is complete we would do two things

Report a Pass/Fail for the test
Upload the results that are generated by the Fitnesse tool into QC

Here is the cod e that you need to place in the QC VAPI-XP-TEST:

' FitNesse.SuiteAcceptanceTests.SuiteWidgetTests.SetUpLinkTest [VBScript]
' Created by Quality Center
' ====================================================

' ----------------------------------------------------
' Main Test Function
' Debug - Boolean. Equals to false if running in [Test Mode] : reporting to Quality Center
' CurrentTestSet - [OTA COM Library].TestSet.
' CurrentTSTest - [OTA COM Library].TSTest.
' CurrentRun - [OTA COM Library].Run.
' ----------------------------------------------------
Sub Test_Main(Debug, CurrentTestSet, CurrentTSTest, CurrentRun)
TDOutput.Clear
   '***************** VARIABLES TO BE MODIFIED **************************
Dim strFITDatabase : strFITDatabase = "FIT"
Dim strFITUsername : strFITUsername = "Aditya"
Dim strFIFITassword : strFIFITassword = "pass"
Dim strFIFITroject : strFIFITroject = "Common"
Dim strFITTestScriptName : strFITTestScriptName = CurrentTSTest.TestName
Dim strResultsDirectory : strResultsDirectory = "C:\Documents and Settings\Desktop\"
'***********************************************************************************************
Dim WshShell, objExecObject, strOutput
Dim strCommand, strTestTypeCommand, strRes
Dim strTestName
'Now setup some variables to handle to test results
Dim strMacroName : strMacroName = "ExtractResultsFromFIT"
Dim strExpectedResultsPath
Dim strTimeStamp
Dim strTemp
'setup the timestamp in YYYYMMDD_HHMM format
'get the year
strTimeStamp = year(now())
'get the month
strTemp = month(now())
if len(strTemp) = 1 then strTemp = "0" & strTemp
strTimeStamp = strTimeStamp & strTemp
'get the day
strTemp = day(now())
if len(strTemp) = 1 then strTemp = "0" & strTemp
strTimeStamp = strTimeStamp & strTemp & "_"
'get the hour
strTemp = hour(now())
if len(strTemp) = 1 then strTemp = "0" & strTemp
strTimeStamp = strTimeStamp & strTemp
'get the minute
strTemp = minute(now())
if len(strTemp) = 1 then strTemp = "0" & strTemp
strTimeStamp = strTimeStamp & strTemp
'get the seconds
strTemp = second(now())
if len(strTemp) = 1 then strTemp = "0" & strTemp
strTimeStamp = strTimeStamp & strTemp
'setup testname variable
if strFITTestScriptName <> "" then
     strTestName = strFITTestScriptName
end if
'Now we can setup the expected results path
strExpectedResultsPath = "C:\Results_" & strTimeStamp & ".html"
'Now start setting up variables used to send the command
if strFITTestScriptName <> "" then
      strTestTypeCommand = strFITTestScriptName
end if
'create a windows shell object
Set WshShell = CreateObject("WScript.Shell")
WshShell.CurrentDirectory = strResultsDirectory
   'construct the command we want to send to it
'this is useful for debug purposes
TDOutput.Print "Launching FIT with this command:"
TDOutput.Print strCommand
' strCommand = "cmd /C java -jar fitnesse.jar -p 8080 -c FitNesse.SuiteAcceptanceTests.SuiteWidgetTests.SetUpLinkTest > C:\results.xml"
   strCommand = "cmd /C java -jar fitnesse.jar -p 8080 -c "&strFITTestScriptName&" > "&strExpectedResultsPath
WshShell.run strCommand
' strOutput = objExecObject.StdOut.readall()
if strOutput <> "" then
     TDOutput.Print strOutput
     'if this was a visual test, then this a playback error but we can still go on to retrieve the results
     if instr(strOutput, "Fail") <= 0 then
          If Not Debug Then
             TDOutput.Print "Test Failed to launch"
             CurrentRun.Status = "Failed"
             CurrentTSTest.Status = "Failed"
          end if
          exit sub
     end if
end if
'if we reach here then the test ran correctly, we can now go and retrieve the results using the excel
     if instr(strOutput, "Pass") <= 0 then
        TDOutput.Print "Test passed"
        CurrentRun.Status = "Passed"
        CurrentTSTest.Status = "Passed"
     else
        TDOutput.Print "Test Failed"
        CurrentRun.Status = "Failed"
        CurrentTSTest.Status = "Failed"
     end if
    Set objFSO = CreateObject("Scripting.FileSystemObject")
'msgbox objFSO.FileExists(strExpectedResultsPath)
rc = objFSO.FileExists(strExpectedResultsPath)
msgbox rc
If ucase(rc) <> "TRUE" then
     sleep (5)
End If

   TDOutput.Print "Uploading results from: " & strExpectedResultsPath
set attachF = CurrentRun.Attachments
Set theAttachment = attachF.AddItem(null)
theAttachment.FileName = strExpectedResultsPath
theAttachment.Type = 1
theAttachment.Post
    TDOutput.Print "Finished"
End Sub
Function sleep(seconds)
Dim startTime, endTime
startTime = Time()
endTime = DateAdd("s",seconds,startTime)
While endTime >= Time()
Wend
End Function

Hope this helps everyone trying to integrate QC with other tools..
The script can be enhanced in many ways, this is just the raw version demonstarting that integration is possible.

Happy Testing!

Update:

Here is a updated code snippet for the same:

' Created by Quality Center
' 11/25/2011 5:12:37 AM
' ====================================================

' ----------------------------------------------------
' Main Test Function
' Debug - Boolean. Equals to false if running in [Test Mode] : reporting to Quality Center
' CurrentTestSet - [OTA COM Library].TestSet.
' CurrentTSTest - [OTA COM Library].TSTest.
' CurrentRun - [OTA COM Library].Run.
' ----------------------------------------------------
Sub Test_Main(Debug, CurrentTestSet, CurrentTSTest, CurrentRun)
TDOutput.Clear
   '***************** VARIABLES TO BE MODIFIED **************************
Dim strFITDatabase : strFITDatabase = "FIT"
Dim strFITUsername : strFITUsername = "Aditya"
Dim strFIFITassword : strFIFITassword = "pass"
Dim strFIFITroject : strFIFITroject = "Common"
Dim strFITTestScriptName : strFITTestScriptName = CurrentTSTest.TestName
Dim strResultsDirectory : strResultsDirectory = "C:\Documents and Settings\\Desktop\"
'***********************************************************************************************
Dim WshShell, objExecObject, strOutput
Dim strCommand, strTestTypeCommand, strRes
Dim strTestName
'Now setup some variables to handle to test results
Dim strMacroName : strMacroName = "ExtractResultsFromFIT"
Dim strExpectedResultsPath
Dim strTimeStamp
Dim strTemp
Dim strPort : strPort = CurrentTestSet.TestSetFolder
'setup the timestamp in YYYYMMDD_HHMM format
'get the year
strTimeStamp = year(now())
'get the month
strTemp = month(now())
if len(strTemp) = 1 then strTemp = "0" & strTemp
strTimeStamp = strTimeStamp & strTemp
'get the day
strTemp = day(now())
if len(strTemp) = 1 then strTemp = "0" & strTemp
strTimeStamp = strTimeStamp & strTemp & "_"
'get the hour
strTemp = hour(now())
if len(strTemp) = 1 then strTemp = "0" & strTemp
strTimeStamp = strTimeStamp & strTemp
'get the minute
strTemp = minute(now())
if len(strTemp) = 1 then strTemp = "0" & strTemp
strTimeStamp = strTimeStamp & strTemp
'get the seconds
strTemp = second(now())
if len(strTemp) = 1 then strTemp = "0" & strTemp
strTimeStamp = strTimeStamp & strTemp
'setup testname variable
if strFITTestScriptName <> "" then
     strTestName = strFITTestScriptName
end if
'Now we can setup the expected results path
strExpectedResultsPath = "C:\Results_" & strTimeStamp & ".html"
'Now start setting up variables used to send the command
if strFITTestScriptName <> "" then
      strTestTypeCommand = strFITTestScriptName
end if
'create a windows shell object
Set WshShell = CreateObject("WScript.Shell")
WshShell.CurrentDirectory = strResultsDirectory
   'construct the command we want to send to it
'this is useful for debug purposes
TDOutput.Print "Launching FIT with this command:"
'Now run the command which will launch FIT - if nothing happens, put the command into a
'command prompt window (start > run > "cmd") to see if there are any errors from it
   strCommand = "cmd /C java -jar fitnesse.jar -p "&strPort&" -c "&strFITTestScriptName&" > "&strExpectedResultsPath
WshShell.run strCommand
Delay(10)
'Declares varibles
Dim objFSO, objFile, strCharacters
'Open the file
Set objFSO = CreateObject("Scripting.FileSystemObject")
Set objFile = objFSO.OpenTextFile(strExpectedResultsPath, 1)
' rc = objFSO.FileExists(strExpectedResultsPath)
'To change the file change the path in the line above
'Read the file
Do Until objFile.AtEndOfStream
    strCharacters = strCharacters & objFile.Read(1)
Loop
'Debug2(strCharacters)
if strCharacters = "" then
       'if this was a visual test, then this a playback error but we can still go on to retrieve the results
       TDOutput.Print "Test Failed to launch"
       CurrentRun.Status = "Failed"
       CurrentTSTest.Status = "Failed"
       exit sub
end if
'if we reach here then the test ran correctly, we can now go and retrieve the results using the excel
if instr(strCharacters, "pass") > 0 then
       TDOutput.Print "Test passed"
       CurrentRun.Status = "Passed"
       CurrentTSTest.Status = "Passed"
else
       TDOutput.Print "Test Failed"
       CurrentRun.Status = "Failed"
       CurrentTSTest.Status = "Failed"
end if
TDOutput.Print "Uploading results from: " & strExpectedResultsPath
set attachF = CurrentRun.Attachments
Set theAttachment = attachF.AddItem(null)
theAttachment.FileName = strExpectedResultsPath
theAttachment.Type = 1
theAttachment.Post
    TDOutput.Print "Finished"
End Sub

Sub Delay( seconds )
    Dim wshShell
    Set wshShell = CreateObject( "WScript.Shell" )
    wshShell.Run "ping -n " & ( seconds + 1 ) & " 127.0.0.1", 0, True
    Set wshShell = Nothing
End Sub

VBscript to close any popup message box

2011-12-01T14:29:00.001+05:30

A strange thing happened when i was trying to run QTP tests from Quality Center , there was this error message popped up after every test run.
Until the message box was not closed manually QC would wait indefinitely, defeating the whole purpose of automation.

So here is the vbcript that would run indefinitely waiting for the popup; and close it for tests to continue:

Set wshShell = CreateObject("WScript.Shell")
Do
      ret = wshShell.AppActivate("System Settings Change")
      If ret = True Then
          wshShell.SendKeys "%N"
          Exit Do
      End If
      WScript.Sleep 500
Loop

Steps to use the QTP .NET Extensibility sdk

2011-11-17T18:08:00.000+05:30

QuickTest .NET Add-in Extensibility is an SDK package that enables you to support testing applications

that use third-party and custom .NET Windows Forms controls that are not supported out-of-the-box by the .NET Add-in.

We need to create a Custom Server (DLLs or control definition XML file) to handle each custom control.

We shall look at the steps to develop a custom server dll using the .net extensibility kit:

Use the QTP Setup program to install the QuickTest Professional .NET Add-in Extensibility SDK on your computer.
Create a new project in VS2008 or above and select the Visual C# > Windows node in the Project types treeVisual C# >

3. In the Application Settings page, specify the following settings:

Server class name e.g. TrackBarSrv
Select the Customize Record process check box.
Select the Customize Run process check box.
Accept the rest of the default settings.

4. Click Next. The XML Configuration Settings page opens
In the XML Configuration Settings page, specify the following settings:

Make sure the Auto-generate the XML configuration segment check box
In the Customized Control type box, enter the entire reference of the object which you can find in the references in VS for e.g. System.Windows.Forms.TrackBar
Accept the rest of the default settings

5. Click Finish and in VS you will see In the Class View window, you can see that the wizard created a class like e.g. TrackBarSrv class derived from the CustomServerBase class and an interface like ITrackBarSrvReplay interface.

6. Implement the Test Record Logic

7. Implement the Test Run Logic

8. Configure QuickTest Professional to use the Custom Server - In the Solution Explorer window, double-click the Configuration.XML fileConfiguration.XML file. Copy everything that is between … and paste it in the tag SwfConfig.xml

P.S - SwfConfig.xml file located in \dat..
Make sure that the elements contain the correct path to your Custom Server DLL

Here is the code for Trackbar.csv

using System;using Mercury.QTP.CustomServer;using System.Windows.Forms;namespace
{
[
QTCustServerReplayInterface]public interface ITrackBarSrvReplay{#region
Wizard generated sample code (commented)// void CustomMouseDown(int X, int Y);#endregion
}
void SetValue(int newValue);///

/// Summary description for TrackBarSrv.///

public class TrackBarSrv :CustomServerBase,ITrackBarSrvReplay{
// You shouldn't call Base class methods/properties at the constructor// since its services are not initialized yet.
{
public TrackBarSrv()//// TODO: Add constructor logic here//}#region IRecord override Methods#region

/// To change Window messages filter implement this method.
/// The default implementation is to get only Control's window messages.
///
public override WND_MsgFilter GetWndMessageFilter()
{
return WND_MsgFilter.WND_MSGS;
}
///

/// To catch window messages you should implement this method.
/// Please note: This method is called just in case the CustomServer is running
/// under QuickTest process.
///

public override RecordStatus OnMessage(ref Message tMsg)
{
// TODO: Add OnMessage implementation.
return RecordStatus.RECORD_HANDLED;
}
*/ Wizard generated sample code (commented)/* ///

#endregion///

/// In case you extend Record process, you should add your Events handlers/// in order to listen to Control's Events.///

{public override void InitEventListener()#region

// Adding OnMouseDown handler.
Delegate e = new System.Windows.Forms.MouseEventHandler(this.OnMouseDown);
// Adds an event handler as the first handler of the event.
// The first argument is the name of the event for which to listen.
// You must provide an event that the control supports.
// Use the .NET Spy to obtain the list of events supported by the control.
// The second argument is the event handler delegate.
AddHandler("MouseDown", e);
*/ Wizard generated sample code (commented)/* // Notice, You can add as many handlers as you need.#endregion
AddHandler(
}
Delegate e = new System.EventHandler(this.OnValueChanged);"ValueChanged", e);///

/// At the end of the Record process this method is called by QuickTest to release /// all the handlers the user added in InitEventListener method./// Please note: Handlers added via QuickTest methods are released by QuickTest infrastructure.///

{
}

{
System.Windows.Forms.
public override void ReleaseEventListener()public void OnValueChanged(object sender, EventArgs e)TrackBar trackBar = (System.Windows.Forms.TrackBar)sender;// get the new value
int newValue = trackBar.Value;// Record SetValue command to the testRecordFunction(
}"SetValue", RecordingMode.RECORD_SEND_LINE, newValue);#endregion

#region Record events handlers#region

{
// Record line in QTP.
if(e.Button == System.Windows.Forms.MouseButtons.Left)
{
RecordFunction( "CustomMouseDown", RecordingMode.RECORD_SEND_LINE, e.X, e.Y);
}
}
*/ Wizard generated sample code (commented)/* public void OnMouseDown(object sender, System.Windows.Forms.MouseEventArgs e)#endregion
#endregion

#region Replay interface implementation#region

{
MouseClick(X, Y, MOUSE_BUTTON.LEFT_MOUSE_BUTTON);
}
*/ Wizard generated sample code (commented)/* public void CustomMouseDown(int X, int Y)#endregion
{
System.Windows.Forms.
trackBar.Value = newValue;
}public void SetValue(int newValue)TrackBar trackBar =(System.Windows.Forms.TrackBar)SourceControl;#endregion}
}
Hope this helps anyone using the extensibility! Will try and post a video if i can of the entire process!

Testing the parachute for a change!

2011-10-10T09:00:00.001+05:30

Solution to warning in Quality Center shows FAIL

2011-09-29T21:32:00.005+05:30

I am sure a lot of QTP users who run their tests from quality center must have noticed that a test passes with warning , but when the test set is closed it turns into fail.

Solution: The best way is to modify the registry setting or use the below code: WshShell.RegWrite"HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Mercury Interactive\QuickTest Professional\"&_ "Logger\Media\TD\TreatWarningAs","TREAT_AS_PASS","REG_SZ"

If the tests are failing the key (TreatWarningAs)would have "TREAT_AS_FAIL" change this to TREAT_AS_PASS and you would be relieved for sure ;)

Hope this helps,
Happy Testing!

Website's underlying technology for automation

2011-08-17T14:43:00.001+05:30

Like most testers, you probably automate a certain number of websites.. Ever wonder how those websites work? What technologies does that website or blog use? What is the underlying software that the website runs on?

These are all good questions before starting automation on a website and not always easily determined by just viewing a website.

Sitonomy is a cool web service that you can use to get information about a website, such as what technology is used to run the website, what advertising the site uses, the programming language for the website, what kind of server it is running on, and lots more.

Solution to "this test is locked by another quality center user"

2011-07-27T13:34:00.000+05:30

There are a lot of instances while working with Quality center that you might have noticed this message "this test is locked by another quality center user”

Sometimes you may have imposed a self lock on it.. J This happens mostly when the user kills the QTP process when the script is still open(from QC).

If you have forgotten the machine where you have imposed a self lock then don’t worry as here is the soln to get rid of the same:

Copy the following code and run it from the machine were qc is instantiated.

On Error Resume Next
desc = "Please provide the network id for the user, and please make sure" &_
        "this user is logged out prior to removing locks"
UName = InputBox(desc,"Provide network id")
If(UName <> "") Then
Set cmd = TDConnection.Command
cmd.CommandText = "DELETE FROM Locks WHERE LK_USER = '" & UName & "'"
cmd.Execute
MsgBox "All locks for user id: " & UName & " were removed", _
    vbNotify+vbOKOnly,"Compelted"
Else
  MsgBox "No locks were changed", vbNotify+vbOKOnly, "No Info"
End If
On Error Goto 0

Provide your userid when prompted and wallah , the magic is done J

You can now go ahead and edit your scripts.

Happy Testing!

Maximize browser using QTP and IE8 / IE7 / Firefox

2011-07-14T18:01:00.004+05:30

Problem : Maximize a tabbed browser (ie7/ie8/firefox)

Solution1: hwnd=Browser("name:=myBrowser").getROProperty("hwnd")
Window("hwnd:="&hwnd").Maximize

Disadvantage: Does not work with tabbed browsers consistently

Solution2: hwnd=Browser("name:=myBrowser").Object.HWND
Set objWindow=Window("hwnd:="&hwnd2)

objWindow.Maximize
Disadvantage: Does not work with tabbed browsers when there are multiple browsers open

Solution3: SystemUtil.Run "C:\Program Files\Internet Explorer\iexplore.exe",URL,"C:\","open","3"

The "3" at the end Activates and Maximizes the window.
Disadvantage: Does not work when the browser is already open

Solution4: Set WshShell = CreateObject("WScript.Shell")
'Alt Space X - shortcut to maximize ie browser.

WshShell.SendKeys "% x"

Hope this helps as always :)
Happy Testing!

Why do we need to launch the application under test (AUT) after QTP is launched?

2011-06-29T16:53:00.000+05:30

Have you ever wondered why do we need to launch the application under test (AUT) after QTP is launched?
When I started learning QTP I asked the same question to the trainer and he said he would get back on it, after some research i found the answer to my question , sharing here what i learnt ( few years back ) and found ( recently ) :

QTP interacts with test applications using windows hooks.

A hook is a point in the system message-handling mechanism where an application can install a subroutine to monitor the message traffic in the system and process certain types of messages before they reach the target window procedure.

Therefore these hooks help QTP during recording and identifying objects
Hooks can only be installed using DLLs
These Hooks can be injected only during runtime when QTP is brought up.

An interesting example from Tarun here :

"Hooks are basically interceptors in system". This example will clear it

User Clicks -> Windows OS determine which Application should get it -> Sends the click to the application.

Now hooks allow to intercept the message and take action accordingly

User Clicks -> Windows OS determine which Application should get it -> Installed Hook (Hook can decide to send the message or cancel it or record it or take some action based on event)->Sends the click to the application.
Happy Testing!

Ten best Open Source Bug Tracking Systems and thier Comparison

2011-06-15T19:06:00.000+05:30

In continuation to the prev post on "Ten Best Tools for Test Automation" read another interesting link (toolsjournal) on what are the ten best open source bug tracking systems, so here is the list in no particular order:

Click on the links to get more info on any of the tools. Happy Testing!

And if you want a comparison on the tools features here is an excellent link

Last friday's date using VbScript

2011-06-14T13:59:00.000+05:30

Some vbscript to get the previous week's date, modify the code and you can do a lot of fun things with the same:

'Gets the last friday's date
strCurrentSysDate = Date
strModDate = dateadd("ww",-1,strCurrentSysDate)
numWeekDay = 6- weekday(strModDate)
strModifiedDate = dateadd("d",numWeekDay,strModDate)
strmonth =left(monthname(month(strModifiedDate)),3)
If len(cstr(day(strModifiedDate))) < 2 Then
strDate = "0"&day(strModifiedDate)
else
strDate = day(strModifiedDate)
End If
strYear = year(strModifiedDate)
strPrevDate = strmonth& "/" & strDate & "/" & strYear
Msgbox strPrevDate

Ten Best Tools for Test Automation

2011-06-13T18:22:00.002+05:30

Read an interesting link (toolsjournal) on what are the ten best tools for automation , though i wouldnt say that these are the ten best tools , rather they are ten known/popular tools in no particular order:

Click on the links to get more info on any of the tools. Happy Testing!

Allow other HP products to interact option in QTP and Launch QC explorer

2011-06-02T18:18:00.003+05:30

Here is the code to set "Allow other HP products" option to true before starting automation.

Set objWshShell = CreateObject("WScript.Shell")

Set objApp = createObject("QuickTest.Application")
objWshShell.RegRead("HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Mercury Interactive\QuickTest Professional\MicTest\")
        If Err <> 0 Then
            Wscript.Sleep 1000
            objApp.Launch
            objApp.Visible = False
            objApp.Options.Run.RunMode = "Fast"
            objApp.Quit
        End If
        objWshShell.RegWrite "HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Mercury Interactive\QuickTest Professional\MicTest\AllowTDConnect","1","REG_DWORD"

'------------------
' Launches QC Explorer
'------------------
Set objFSO = CreateObject("Scripting.FileSystemObject")
If objFSO.FileExists ("C:\Program Files\Common Files\HP\QCExplorer\QCExplorer.exe") Then
            objWshShell.run "cmd /K CD C:\Program Files\Common Files\HP\QCExplorer\ & QCExplorer.exe http://qc.com/qcbin/start_a.htm"
ElseIf objFSO.FileExists ("C:\Program Files (x86)\Common Files\HP\QCExplorer\QCExplorer.exe") Then
            objWshShell.run "cmd /K CD C:\Program Files (x86)\Common Files\HP\QCExplorer\ & QCExplorer.exe http://qc.com/qcbin/start_a.htm"
Else
    Msgbox "QC Explorer not launched as .exe file not found"
End If

Happy Testing!

Test Automation Tools Comparison Matrix - Knol

2011-06-02T17:09:00.003+05:30

Today came across an interesting comparison on test automation tools on "knol"

P.S: Click on the link to get the comparison .

QTP - Wait for web page to load completely

2011-05-25T12:42:00.000+05:30

There are instances when there isn't any unique property or object to check on the landing page during a browser navigation, in such cases we can use either of the below options to code:

set objReadyState = Browser("").Page("").Object
While objReadyState.readyState = "Completed"
Wend
Set Object=nothing

Set Object=Browser("").object
While Object.Busy=True
Wend
Set Object=nothing

Happy Testing!

Code to get tagnames and values from an xml

2011-05-24T15:26:00.000+05:30

In continuation from the previous post where we try and get the attribute values from an xml, here is the code where we get the tag names and its values :

Const xmlFile1= "C:\Test.xml"

Set xmlDoc1 = CreateObject("Msxml2.DOMDocument")
xmlDoc1.load(xmlFile1)
set nodes1 = xmlDoc1.selectNodes("//*")
for i = 0 to nodes1.length -1
        tagname1 = nodes1(i).nodeName
        val1 = nodes1(i).text
        If tagname1= "test" Then
                msgbox tagname1
                msgbox val1
                Exit for
        End If
next

Hope this helps , happy testing!

Golden Rules for Career Success - Richard Moran

2011-05-19T15:15:00.000+05:30

Loved this article and thought its apt for the skillset label on my blog , so here it is for the benefit of others:

WORKING as a business consultant all over the world, I have discovered some basic career-related rules that everyone should know but many don’t.

Business is made up of ambiguous victories and nebulous defeats. Claim them all as victories.
Keep track of what you do; someone is sure to ask.
Be comfortable around senior managers, or learn to fake it.
Never bring your boss a problem without some solution.
You are getting paid to think, not to whine.
Long hours don’t mean anything; results count, not effort.
Write down ideas; they get lost, like good pens.
Always arrive at work 30 minutes before your boss.
Help other people network for jobs. You never know when your turn will come.
Don’t take days off sick unless you are.
Assume no one can / will keep a secret.
Know when you do your best morning, night, under pressure, relaxed; schedule and prioritize your work accordingly.
Treat everyone who works in the organization with respect and dignity, whether it be the cleaner or the managing director. Don’t ever be patronizing.
Never appear stressed in front of a client, a customer or your boss. Take a deep breath and ask yourself: In the course of human events, how important is this?
If you get the entrepreneurial urge, visit someone who has his own business. It may cure you.
Acknowledging someone else’s contribution will repay you doubly.
Career planning is an oxymoron. The most exciting opportunities tend to be unplanned.
Always choose to do what you’ll remember ten years from now.
The size of your office is not as important as the size of your pay cheque.
Understand what finished work looks like and deliver your work only when it is finished.
The person who spends all of his or her time is not hard-working; he or she is boring.
Know how to write business letters including thank-you notes as well as proposals.
Never confuse a memo with reality. Most memos from the top are political fantasy.
Eliminate guilt. Don’t fiddle expenses, taxes or benefits, and don’t cheat colleagues.
Reorganizations mean that someone will lose his or her job. Get on the committee that will make the recommendations.
Job security does not exist.
Always have an answer to the question, What would I do if I lost my job tomorrow
Go to the company Christmas party. Don’t get drunk at the company Christmas party.
Avoid working at weekends. Work longer during the week if you have to.
The most successful people in business are interesting.
Sometimes you’ll be on a winning streak and everything will click; take maximum advantage. When the opposite is true, hold steady and wait it out.
Never in your life say, Its not my job
Be loyal to your career, your interests and yourself.
Understand the skills and abilities that set you apart. Use them whenever you have an opportunity.
People remember the end of the project. As they say in boxing, always finish stronger than you start.

Hope you enjoyed reading it!

Skillset - Test Automation Developer

2011-05-11T18:29:00.002+05:30

In continuation of my previous posts that are tagged "Skillset" , Here is what a company is looking for when they want a "Test Automation Developer"

Overview:

The Test Automation Developer will build and execute test automation scripts using QTP, Selenium, Macro or Mobile automation test tools for functional system integration and business acceptance testing under multiple platforms and cross-browsers.

Responsibilities:

• Write automation test plans & strategies, convert & or write test scripts, perform test execution, provide result documentation & metrics reporting.
• Build automation framework in QTP
• Collaborate with Quality Assurance Analyst – subject matter expert to gather requirements for automation development and provide guidance to execution of scripts
• Provide technical knowledge on multiple projects simultaneously.
• Solid written and verbal communication skills
• Proven automation development experience
• Proficient in testing functionality of a Web and Mobile based applications.
• Must be resourceful, proactive, self-starter, able to work alone & as a team player in a dynamic environment.

Requirements:

• Software QA experience: 3 – 6 years
• Quick Test Pro (QTP) experience: 3 – 6 years
• Quality Center experience: 3 – 4 years
• Working knowledge of quality assurance methodologies and Software Development Life Cycle
• Experience building the automation frameworks in QTP
• Solid SQL skills
• Database and Back-End as well as end-to-end testing experience.
• HP QTP 10 with Web Add-on
• HP QualityCenter 10
• Selenium IDE
• VBScripting
• Descriptive Programming (Scripts from Scratch)
• SQL Server or Oracle database
• SQL Query
• VBS Macro
• MS Office.

Code to copy a test set from one folder to another in Quality Center

2011-04-29T16:50:00.001+05:30

I am sharing this info as I had to do quite a research before i found the solution.

Problem: Copy a test set from one folder to another in Quality Center test lab using code.

First things first: This cannot be coded in vbscript or QTP as it uses the ISupportCopyPaste interface and the CopyToClipboard method which is part of this interface. Therefore you cannot declare a statement like Dim iscp As ISupportCopyPaste

A simpler way would be to use vba and do the following:

1. Add the following code in excel vba editor.
2. Add the "OTA COM Type Library" as a reference under tools -> references from excel.
3. Run and enjoy the magic :-)

Solution:

Public Function CopyPasteTestSetFolder(sourceFolderPath, destFolderPath)

     strServer = "http://xyz/qcbin"
     strDomain = ""
     strProject = ""
     strUser = ""
     strPassword = ""

     Set objTDConnection = CreateObject("tdapiole80.TDCONNECTION")
     objTDConnection.InitConnection strServer, strDomain
     objTDConnection.ConnectProject strProject, strUser, strPassword

     Set objTreeManager = objTDConnection.TestSetTreeManager
     Set sourceFolder = objTreeManager.NodeByPath(sourceFolderPath)
     Set destFolder = objTreeManager.NodeByPath(destFolderPath)

     Dim iscp As ISupportCopyPaste

     Set iscp = sourceFolder

     clipboard = iscp.CopyToClipBoard(sourceFolder.NodeID, 0, sourceFolderPath)

     Set iscp = destFolder
     iscp.PasteFromClipBoard clipboard, destFolder.NodeID, 0, -1

     Set treeMng = Nothing
     Set sourceFolder = Nothing
     Set destFolder = Nothing
     Set iscp = Nothing

End Function

Happy Testing!

QTP 11.0 - Patches till April 2011

2011-04-28T16:53:00.000+05:30

Here are a set of patches that might help wrt QTP 11.0:

QTP_00699

QTP 11 support for 64-Bit applications.
The 64-Bit technologies that are currently supported:

- .Net
- Java
- WPF
- Standard

http://h20230.www2.hp.com/selfsolve/document/FID/DOCUMENTUM_QTP_00699

QTP_00709

Recovery scenarios did not work in BPT wrapper tests.
Run-time errors were displayed if you ran a business component that contained a QCUtil.CurrentTest.Name step.
Function libraries that were created from an
QuickTest crashed or an OS blue screen appeared when using a User-Defined / Non-HLLAPI emulator on Windows 7 with Office 2007/2010 installed.

http://h20230.www2.hp.com/selfsolve/document/FID/DOCUMENTUM_QTP_00709

WEB_00073

Testing applications in Internet Explorer when Internet
Explorer is in protected mode.

http://support.openview.hp.com/downloadAPatch.jsp?patchName=QTPWEB_00073.EXE&prodName=qtp&prodRelease=11.0

ORACLE_00010

Support for Oracle Forms 11g.Enhanced support for OracleTable objects.

http://support.openview.hp.com/downloadAPatch.jsp?patchName=QTPORACLE_00010.EXE&prodName=qtp&prodRelease=11.0

PB_00012

This patch adds support for testing PowerBuilder 12 applications

http://support.openview.hp.com/downloadAPatch.jsp?patchName=QTPPB_00012.EXE&prodName=qtp&prodRelease=11.00

SAP_00012

This patch adds support for testing SAP CRM 7 (a.k.a. ICWC 7, Interaction Center Web Client 7)

http://support.openview.hp.com/downloadAPatch.jsp?patchName=QTPSAP_00012.EXE&prodName=qtp&prodRelease=11.0

QTPNET_00051

This patch installs an updated version of the .NET Add-in, providing testing support for Silverlight 2, 3 and 4.

http://support.openview.hp.com/downloadAPatch.jsp?patchName=QTPNET_00051.EXE&prodName=qtp&prodRelease=11.0

WEB_00063

This patch provides official support for testing Web applications in Firefox 3.6

http://support.openview.hp.com/downloadAPatch.jsp?patchName=QTPWEB_00063.EXE&prodName=qtp&prodRelease=11.0

QTPNET_00062

This hotfix fixes the following problems:

1. QuickTest Professional sometimes caused .Net 4 WPF applications with multiple AppDomains to crash.

2. QuickTest Professional sometimes caused an error message to be displayed by the application when

spying on a specific WPF combo box.

QTPNET_00066

1. This hotfix enables a custom server to instruct QuickTest Professional to assign a logical name to a test object by implementing a 'logical_name' property defined in its CustomPropInterface.

2. This hotfix enables a custom server to define run methods that include optional parameters by tagging the parameters with the [Optional] attribute. To do this, the argument element's IsMandatory attribute needs to be set to 'false' in the test object configuration file.

3. Prior to this hotfix, QuickTest would sometimes ignore the return value of a custom server's IsKnownPartOf method when applied to a combo box child.

4. Prior to this hotfix, QuickTest would sometimes load into the application all the assemblies in the folder containing the custom server dll.

VBScript Code beautifier / Formatter

2011-04-25T14:47:00.000+05:30

For a long time was looking for some tool that would quickly format the vbscript files that I had. Here is an amazing tool that will help you do the same:

Both the source code and the exe are available for download from here:VBSBeautifier - Daan Systems

Features:

· Comes with a nice GUI.
· Works on serverside and clientside VBScript.
· Can be used as a text filter in editors.
· Skips HTML.
· Properizes keywords.
· Splits Dim statements.
· Places spaces around operators.
· Indents blocks.
· Lines out assignment statements.
· Removes redundant endlines.
· Makes backups.

Selenuium and Cucumber

2011-04-21T17:19:00.000+05:30

Since both Selenium and Cucumber are my fav tools , Found an interesting deck on slideshare titled : "Using Selenium and Cucumber to test a Healthcare Information System"

This was presented at the Selenium Conference April 2011 - San Fransisco by Andy Tinkham.

Here is the link to download the same.

FizzBuzz

2011-04-20T15:40:00.000+05:30

Try solving this very simple program which is asked in many interviews, especially to testers who use a lot of scripting in automation:

Write a program that prints the numbers from 1 to 100. But for multiples of three print “Fizz” instead of the number and For the multiples of five print “Buzz”. For numbers which are multiples of both three and five print “FizzBuzz”

This is also a game played in the pubs , where players generally sit in a circle. The player designated to go first says the number "1", and each player thenceforth counts one number in turn. However, any number divisible by three is replaced by the word fizz and any divisible by five by the word buzz. Numbers divisible by both become fizz buzz. A player who hesitates or makes a mistake is either eliminated or must pay a forfeit, such as taking a drink.

Most tester's who know to code are not able to solve this simple problem. Out of every ten automation engineers i have interviewed 9 weren't able to solve this simple problem.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Lets look at the simple algo:

For n = 1 To 100
 Select Case 0
   Case n Mod 15
      f = "FizzBuzz"
   Case n Mod 3
      f = "Fizz"
   Case n Mod 5
      f = "Buzz"
   Case Else
      f = n
 End Select
 Print f

Next n

Browse from VBScript

2011-04-19T16:30:00.002+05:30

Something very simple yet complicated is trying to get a browse dialog using vbs.
So here is a snippet that will help in adding a Browse dialog like in the pic , instead of a message box asking for the absolute/relative path of the folder:

Const EDITBOX = &H10
Const DIALOGSTYLE = &H40
Set objShell = CreateObject("Shell.Application")
Set objFolder= objShell.BrowseForFolder(0, "My Computer:",EDITBOX Or DIALOGSTYLE)

Browse = objFolder.Items.Item.path
If Err.Number > 0 Then
    MsgBox("You have not selected a folder." & vbCrlf & "This script will not continue!")
    Err.Clear
Else
    wscript.echo Browse
End If

Hope this helps!

Quick Overview on Agile Scrum

2011-04-07T18:47:00.000+05:30

Before we do more Scrum, we should know what is Agile:

What is Agility?

“Values, principles and practices that foster team communication and feedback to regularly deliver customer value through working software.”

Team communications - Concentrate more on communication and collaboration rather than process and tools
Feedback - lots and lots of daily feedback with all stake holders involved -
Regularly Deliver - Software releases every quarter with internal releases weekly or bi-weekly
Value - Focus on highest valued features first
Working Software - Focus on getting S/W working early and keeping it releasable rather than big-bang waterfall approach

Agile Values

Emphasize face-to-face communication over written documents.
Agile teams are located in a single open office sometimes referred to as a bullpen.
Highlight working software as the primary measure of progress.
Produce very little written documentation relative to other methods

What are the Agile methods ?

SCRUM
Adaptive Software Development - replaces the traditional waterfall cycle with a repeating series of speculate, collaborate, and learn cycles.
Crystal - contains the following properties frequent Delivery of Usable Code to Users , reflective Improvement.
Dynamic System Development Method (DSDM) - Its goal is to deliver software systems on time and on budget while adjusting for changing requirements along the development process.
Extreme Programming - it advocates frequent "releases" in short development cycles (timeboxing), which is intended to improve productivity and introduce checkpoints where new customer requirements can be adopted.
Feature Driven Development (FDD) –At start of project: Develop an Overall Model, Build a Features List, Plan by FeatureWithin each iteration: Design by Feature, Build by Feature

Scrum - Introduction

Scrum (an abbreviated form of scrummage), in the sports of rugby, is a way of restarting the game, when the ball has gone out of play.
Scrum is an iterative incremental framework for managing projects.
Focuses on managing systems with changing requirements
The goal is to deliver as much quality software as possible within a series of short intervals.

Scrum - Process

Sprint

Scrum projects make progress in a series of “Sprints”
Timeframes are called Time-boxes (typically 2 – 4 weeks)
Every Sprint team does the following: Analysis -> Design -> Code ->Test
At the end of each Sprint, the Team must produce a potentially shippable product increment.

Scrum Framework

Roles : Product Owner, Scrum Master, Team
Artifacts : Product Backlog, Sprint Backlog, and Burndown Chart
Ceremonies : Sprint Planning, Sprint Review, Sprint Retrospective, & Daily Scrum Meeting

Product Owner

Represents (or is) the user or customer for the project.
Defines goals for the overall project
Knowing what to build and in what sequence
Defines and Prioritizes Features
Set length of calendar time for Sprint

Typically 2-4 weeks
Does not interfere with Sprint (no scope creep)
Release dates. Accepts or rejects work.

Scrum Master

Supports the Team
Facilitates the Daily Scrum meeting. Asks each developer:

What did you do yesterday?
What are you doing today?
What is in your way?

Listens and watches carefully during Scrum meeting
Secures resources if needed
Communicates to Product Owner

Scrum Team

Typically 5-10 people
Cross-functional - QA, Programmers, UI Designers, etc.
Members should be full-time/dedicated
Teams are self-organizing
Members can change only between sprints

Scrum’s three Artifacts

Product Backlog :

Requirements
A dynamic list of all that is desired to work on the project
Prioritized by the Product Owner based on business value
Reprioritized at the start of each Sprint
Each feature has an associated estimate, provided by the ACTUAL team who will do the work
High priority features are split into “stories” achievable within an iteration.
Each “story” is prioritized and scoped.
Prioritized based on business value (Very High, High, etc.) by the Product Owner.

Sprint Backlog :

A subset of Product Backlog Items, which define the work for a Sprint
Usually has more details including planned hours and primary person responsible to do the work during the Sprint
Is created ONLY by Team members
Should be updated every day
If a task requires more than 16 hours, it should be broken down
Team can add or subtract items from the list. Product Owner is not allowed to do it

Sprint Burndown Chart:

Provides visibility into the Sprint
Demonstrates progress by the team
Work on the Horizontal, Time on the Vertical
Depicts the total Sprint Backlog hours remaining per day.
Ideally should burn down to zero to the end of the Sprint
It is never a straight line.

Scrum’s three ceremonies:

Sprint Planning Meeting:

Product Owner reviews: Vision, Roadmap, Release Plan
Team reviews: Estimates for each item on Backlog that is a candidate for the Sprint
Team pulls the work: From the Product Backlog onto the Sprint Backlog

Daily Scrum Meeting

Short (15 - 30 min) frequent meetings, facilitated by the Scrum Master
All team members attend
One activity – Scrum Master asks each attendee 3 questions
Both Chickens and pigs are invited
Only pigs can talk

Sprint Review Meeting

Team presents what it accomplished during the sprint
Typically takes the form of a demo of new features or underlying architecture
Informal 2-hour prep time rule
Starts with: Product Demo Led by Product Owner
Ends with: Sprint Retrospective Led by Scrum Master
•What worked?
•What didn’t?
•What adjustments can we make now?

What is a User Story?

Short descriptions of features that need to be coded and tested
Simple requirements
Generally written on 3X5 index cards
Form: As [a type of user] I want to [perform a specific action] such that [result]
Example: “As a web user, I want to

Make safe searches, such that I may
have filtered search results”

Stories that are big are called EPICS

Click on .net toolbar using bounds property

2011-03-24T16:01:00.000+05:30

In continuation to the previous post Automation of the .NET ToolbarsManager , here is the code that will click on any toolbars button using the bounds property :

Note that:

The toolbar is recognized as an swfobject here
We are accessing the CommandLinks collection to access individual buttons in the toolbar
Using an array to get the bounds and then clicking on the respective button.

Set Mnubar = SwfWindow("").SwfObject("").Object.CommandLinks

For i = 0 To Mnubar.Count -1
    Mnuname=Mnubar.Item(i).Text
    msgbox Mnuname
    oBounds = Mnubar.Item(i).Bounds
    arrBounds = Split(oBounds, ",")
    arrBound = Split(arrBounds(0), "=")
    iX = CInt(arrBound(1))
    arrBound = Split(arrBounds(1), "=")
    iY = CInt(arrBound(1))
    SwfWindow("").Activate
    SwfWindow("").SwfObject("").Click iX,iY
Next

We can make this code more generic by passing the name of the button or the tooltip of the button which has to be clicked.

Hope this helps... Happy Automating!

Create Reports Using TestNG - Testing

2011-03-23T23:23:00.001+05:30

Creating Report.....It is easy with TestNG...it will create default reports....in HTML format.

The Default feature in TestNG is it will create reports automatically..you need not to write any code...

Just run the Script with TestNG...it will automatically create a report...

First Setup the TestNg
Please go through the following link if you dont know how to set up...

Setting up Selenium RC & TestNG using Eclipse

Observe the screen shot before running the test...

Before Running the Test

Run the script --Run as -->TestNG --see the below screen shot...Report is generated.

Screen Shot after running the Test

After Running the Test

NOTE: You need to download the testng-5.14.10.jar file................it should be in your referenced library..

Hope it will be helpful .......

Source: NagaRaju Dasam

If not QTP then what?

2011-03-15T18:34:00.001+05:30

I have seen a lot of traction towards the blog post "QTP v/s Selenium" . Like I have always said in my earlier posts that QTP has been one of my favorite tools and also one of the most explored tools.Tools like Quicktest are great but there are definitely some drawbacks with knowing just QTP and nothing else.
I believe going forward just knowing tools like QTP would not help... We would need tools that :

Can fit into a fast paced agile project
Are low on cost
Are low on maintainance.
Are not just GUI based and at-least get to a level below the presentation layer.
Allow choice of scripting languages
Allow Continuous Integration

Open-source has contributed a great deal to such kinda tools ... so here is a quick list of tools that answer if not QTP then what? in no specific order:

Selenium / Tellurium
Watir / WatiN
Sahi
FitNesse
Canoo
Cucumber
Rspec
AutoIt / iMacros
White for .Net
Marathon/JWebUnit for Java
Frankenstein for Swing apps

There are many more tools but these are some of them that seem to be popular with the masses and have a good support.

Run Commands Cheat sheet

2011-03-11T16:01:00.000+05:30

Run command is one of the most used commands when it comes to testing windows based applications.
Here are a set of commands that can be used as a quick reference while automating windows apps:

Application Data Folder	%appdata%
Home Directory Drive	%homedrive%
Home Directory	%homepath%
Shared Home Directory	%homeshare%
Temporary Folder	%temp%
Windows Root Drive	%systemdrive%
Windows Root Directory	%windir%

Computer Management	compmgmt.msc
Device Manager	devmgmt.msc
Disk Cleanup Utility	cleanmgr
Disk Defragment	dfrg.msc
Disk Management	diskmgmt.msc
Disk Partition Manager	diskpart
Dr. Watson System Troubleshooting	drwtsn32
Driver Verifier Utility	verifier
Event Viewer	eventvwr.msc
Group Policy Editor (XP Prof)	gpedit.msc
Local Security Settings	secpol.msc
Local Users and Groups	lusrmgr.msc
Performance Monitor	perfmon
Resultant Set of Policy	rsop.msc
Scheduled Tasks	control schedtasks
Services	services.msc
Shared Folders	fsmgmt.msc
System Configuration Editor	sysedit
System Configuration Utility	msconfig
Utility Manager	utilman
Windows System Security Tool	syskey

Run Calculator	calc
Run Command Prompt	cmd
Run Firefox (if installed)	firefox
Run Internet Explorer	iexplore
Run Microsoft Word (if installed)	winword
Run Microsoft Excel (if installed)	excel
Run Microsoft Outlook (if installed)	outlook
Run Notepad	notepad
Run Wordpad	wordpad
Open Control Panel	control panel
Open Program Files folder	%programfiles%
Shutdown Windows	shutdown
Restart Windows	shutdown -r
Log Off Windows	logoff
Registry Editor	regedit
Task Manager	taskmgr
Windows Update Launches	wupdmgr

Character Map	charmap
Check Disk Utility	chkdsk
Clipboard Viewer	clipbrd
Free Cell	freecell
Hearts Card	mshearts
Microsoft Chat	winchat
Minesweeper	winmine
On Screen Keyboard	osk
Remote Desktop	mstsc
Spider Solitare	spider
Telnet Client	telnet
Windows Magnifier	magnify

Accessibility Controls	access.cpl
Add Hardware Wizard	hdwwiz.cpl
Add/Remove Programs	appwiz.cpl
Administrative Tools	control admintools
Automatic Updates	wuaucpl.cpl
Date and Time	timedate.cpl
Display Properties	desk.cpl
Folders Properties	control folders
Fonts	control fonts
Fonts Folder	fonts
Game Controllers	joy.cpl
Internet Properties	inetcpl.cpl
Keyboard Properties	control keyboard
Mouse Properties	control mouse
Network Connections	control netconnections
Network Setup Wizard	netsetup.cpl
ODBC Data Source Administrator	odbccp32.cpl
Password Properties	password.cpl
Phone and Modem Options	telephon.cpl
Power Configuration	powercfg.cpl
Printers and Faxes	control printers
Printers Folder	printers
Regional Settings	intl.cpl
Scanners and Cameras	sticpl.cpl
Security Center	wscui.cpl
Sounds and Audio	mmsys.cpl
User Account Management	nusrmgr.cpl
Windows Firewall	firewall.cpl

Testing News - Mar 10th 2011

2011-03-10T22:38:00.001+05:30

QualiSystems Strengthens APAC Presence With New Singapore Headquarters - QualiSystems, a leading provider of test automation solutions for network systems, telecom services and electronic equipment, today announced the opening of a new APAC regional branch in Singapore.Source: News

SOASTA Awarded Patent for Visual User Interface of its CloudTest Platform - SOASTA, the leader in cloud-based performance testing, today announced that the United States Patent and Trademark Office has issued the company patent No. 7,844,036 entitled, "Visual Test Automation Tool for Message-Based Applications, Web Applications and SOA Systems." Source: News

DATE 2011 (Design Automation and Test in Europe ) Conference from 14th -18th Mar 2011 - Source:News

Croatian brainboxes deploy calculus-based CAPTCHA - Source: News

Test Automation Career - QTP

2011-03-10T16:57:00.000+05:30

I have had a lot of friends and testing aspirants asking me , what is it that i should know in QTP to start a career in automation . I shall have a series of posts that will give you an idea of what are the things you need to learn if you want to test a specific technology : e.g : .Net , Java, WebServices etc...
I shall start with the simplest one and my favorite QTP:

Basics of using QTP- use the tutorial and refernce guide for this
Web App testing ( Use the sample HP app for this)
Windows App testing ( Use the sample HP app for this)
VB scripting (from a quicktest point of view)
Advanced concepts in QTP.
Other Advanced concepts like COM objects, Quick test object model
Make your own DLL’s, work with WSC, and QTP Reserved Objects and Registry changes
Synchronizing QTP with external applications.

Hope this helps all those who wanna learn QTP and get into automation.

QTP and AutoIt - A deadly combination!

2011-02-22T15:27:00.001+05:30

From the last post about creating COM objects , here is another solution that can help you create AutoIt objects within QTP:

Go to http://www.autoitscript.com/autoit3/downloads.shtml and download the zip file.
Extract the file and traverse to the Install -> AutoItX folder.
Copy the AutoItX3.dll file to the following path Windows Drive:\WINDOWS\system32 folder.
Now register the dll by typing "regsvr32 AutoItX3.dll" in the cmd and look for the message "Registration succeeded"

Set oAutoIt = CreateObject("AutoItX3.Control")

That's how easy it is to start using AutoIt from within QTP.

CreateObject Methods

2011-02-16T18:39:00.000+05:30

We often create automation objects and assign the object returned by CreateObject to an object variable. Once the object is created we access properties and methods of the new object using the object variable. There are times that we don't know what are the objects that can be accessed using the CreateObject method.

Though there is no list which can tell us all the objects that can be accessed as it depends on the COM Objects with IDispatch interface registered on your computer. To find available objects, the simplest way is to look at the HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT hive in the registry: Here is a list that might help as a quick reference:

Syntax: CreateObject(Class) here a class would be Servername.typename
Servername would be the application providing the object and typename would be the type or the class of the object created.

Set objEmail = CreateObject( "CDO.Message" )
Set objIE = CreateObject( "InternetExplorer.Application" )
Set objInet = CreateObject( "InetCtls.Inet.1" )
Set objHTTP = CreateObject( "WinHttp.WinHttpRequest.5.1" )
Set objExcel = CreateObject( "Excel.Application" )
Set objOutlook = CreateObject( "Outlook.Application" )
Set objPpt = CreateObject( "PowerPoint.Application" )
Set objWord = CreateObject( "Word.Application" )
Set objCal = CreateObject( "MSCAL.Calendar" )
Set objQPro = CreateObject( "QuattroPro.PerfectScript" )
Set objWP = CreateObject( "WordPerfect.PerfectScript" )
Set objConn = CreateObject( "ADODB.Connection" )
Set objRecSet = CreateObject( "ADODB.Recordset" )
Set objDic = CreateObject( "Scripting.Dictionary" )
Set objFSO = CreateObject( "Scripting.FileSystemObject" )
Set wshNetwork = CreateObject( "WScript.Network" )
Set wshShell = CreateObject( "WScript.Shell" )
Set objRandom = CreateObject( "System.Random" )
Set objArrList = CreateObject( "System.Collections.ArrayList" )
Set objSortList = CreateObject( "System.Collections.SortedList" )
Set xmlDoc = CreateObject( "Microsoft.XmlDom" )
Set xml2Doc = CreateObject( "Msxml2.DOMDocument.5.0" )
Set objiTunes = CreateObject( "iTunes.Application" )
Set objPlayer = CreateObject( "WMPlayer.OCX" )
Set objWMPlayer = CreateObject( "WMPlayer.OCX.7" )
Set objReal = CreateObject( "rmocx.RealPlayer G2 Control.1" )
Set objFSDialog = CreateObject( "SAFRCFileDlg.FileSave" )
Set objFODialog = CreateObject( "SAFRCFileDlg.FileOpen" )
Set objDialog = CreateObject( "UserAccounts.CommonDialog" )
Set SOAPClient = CreateObject( "MSSOAP.SOAPClient" )
Set objWOL = CreateObject( "UltraWOL.ctlUltraWOL" )
Set objSearcher = CreateObject( "Microsoft.Update.Searcher" )
Set objShell = CreateObject( "Shell.Application" )
Set objDeviceReplay=CreateObject("Mercury.DeviceReplay")

Automation of the .NET ToolbarsManager

2011-02-14T18:27:00.002+05:30

If you use QTP for automating .NET apps and the app is built using infragistics, you know that it is not easy to use the .NET spy . After a lot of effort I was able to find solution to perform operations on a infragistics toolbar where the swftoobar object was getting identified as a swfobject:

Here is the code how to work with .net toolbarsmanager:

set cToolbars = SwfWindow("").SwfObject("").Object.ToolbarsManager.Toolbars
Set oMyTool = GetToolFromToolbar(cToolbars,"", "")
omyTool. 'Operation you want

Function GetToolFromToolbar(byref cToolbars, sToolbarKey, sToolKey)
   Dim oToolbar ' Toolbar object
   Dim bToolbarFound
   Dim bToolFound

   bToolbarFound = false
   bToolFound = false

   For x = 0 to cToolbars.Count - 1
      If sToolbarKey = cToolbars.GetItem(x).Key Then
          set oToolbar = cToolbars.GetItem(x)
          bToolbarFound = true
          Exit for
      End If
   Next

   If bToolbarFound = true Then
       For x = 0 to oToolbar.Tools.Count - 1
         If sToolKey = oToolbar.Tools.GetItem(x).Key Then
             Set GetToolFromToolbar = oToolbar.Tools.GetItem(x)
                 bToolFound = true
                 Exit for
           End If
       Next

       If bToolFound = false Then
       msgbox"Tool Not Found"
    End If
End If
End Function

And if you are lucky that the toolbar is recognized as swftoolbar then its easier:

set obj = SwfWindow("SwfWindow").SwfToolbar("SwfToolbar").Object.Buttons
msgbox obj.Count
For i = 1 to obj.Count
msgbox obj.Item(i).tooltiptext // or any other operation
Next

Download QC OTA API Reference Handbook - Blogs In WATiN

2011-02-08T22:39:00.001+05:30

If you are looking for OTA (Open Test Architecture API provided by hp QC then your search will end here.
I will explain you easy way to download API reference details from QC.
a. Login to your QC
b. At Top most corner click on Help Link
c. From the pop-up window select Documentation Library as shown in below figure.

d. As soon as you will select above option a window will appear.
e. Select an option: HP QUALITY Center Open Test Architecture API reference Online
f. Click on online link next to the mentioned text
g. Save the references documentation at your drive.
h. Shown in below figure.

Hope this would be helpful !!

Source: Md. Jawed

Convert Excel to Text file

2011-02-07T18:48:00.004+05:30

I was trying to convert an excel files worksheets to a single text file , there was lot of reusable code on the web for converting text to excel but not viceversa. So for all of you who want to do what I did, here is the simple and easy code to convert excel to text file based on the rows and columns of the excel file:

'Prompts for accepting user input

strViewPath = Trim (InputBox ("Plz enter the path for the excel file",,"C:\temp\"))

strTest = Trim (InputBox ("Plz enter the text file name",,"sample"))

If Right (strViewPath, 1) <> "\" Then

strViewPath = strViewPath & "\"

End If

strTestName = strTest

strTextFilePath = strViewPath

'Assign the values for the excel and text file that needs to be converted

TestToConvert = strViewPath + strTest + ".xls"

TextFile =strTextFilePath + strTestName + ".txt"

'Create the excel object

Set oExcel = CreateObject("Excel.Application")

oExcel.Visible = False

'Open the excel file for conversion

oExcel.DisplayAlerts = False

oExcel.Workbooks.Open TestToConvert, True

'Call the text streamer function that will convert the file

TextStreamer TextFile, oExcel

'Exit the Excel file

oExcel.Quit

Private Sub TextStreamer(TextFileName, objExcel)

'Declare constants for reading,writing and appending to a text file

Const ForReading = 1, ForWriting = 2, ForAppending = 3

Const TristateUseDefault = -2, TristateTrue = -1, TristateFalse = 0

Dim fs, f, ts, x, y, LastRow, LastColumn, c, objSheet, shts()

'Create the file system object for text file editing

Set fs = CreateObject("Scripting.FileSystemObject")

fs.CreateTextFile TextFileName

Set f = fs.GetFile(TextFileName)

Set ts = f.OpenAsTextStream(ForWriting, TristateUseDefault)

'Get the number of worksheets in the source excel file

intNoOfSheets = objExcel.Worksheets.count

z = intNoOfSheets

'Traverse through every sheet that needs to be converted

For i = 1 to intNoOfSheets

'Activate the first worksheet

objExcel.Worksheets(z).Activate

objExcel.Worksheets(z).Select

Set objSheet = objExcel.ActiveWorkbook.Worksheets(z)

strSheetName = objsheet.name

objSheet.Cells(1).Select

LastRow = objSheet.UsedRange.Rows.Count + 2

LastColumn = objSheet.UsedRange.Columns.Count

objSheet.Cells(1).Select

ts.write "["&strSheetName&"]"

ts.write Chr(13) & Chr(10)

'Loop through the rows and columns in the excel worksheet and write the data to the text file

For x = 0 To LastRow

For y = 0 To LastColumn -1

If objExcel.ActiveCell.Offset(x, y).Value <> "" then

ts.write (objExcel.ActiveCell.Offset(x, y).Value)

'ts.write Chr(9)

End If

ts.write Chr(13) & Chr(10)

z= z-1

Next

'Close the excel file test streamer

ts.Close

msgbox "Conversion Complete!"

End Sub

Presentation downloads from the Software Testing Conference (SofTec 2011)

2011-02-04T15:14:00.001+05:30

Here is a list of presentations that were used at the Software Testing Conference (SofTec 2011) held in Chennai last week, also mentioned in my earlier post on Testing News

“Present problems and future solutions” - Link
“Economical, Robust Web Automation using Sahi - Link
“Notes from a problem solving tester consultant” - Link
“Smarter ways of doing Selenium Automation”. - Link
“The Emerging Trend of Cloud Computing and Software Testing” - Link
“I am the Bug Hunter" - Link
“Testing at Startups" - Link

Source: Slideshare

Testing News - Feb 2nd 2011

2011-02-02T22:01:00.000+05:30

Wipro launches Testing-as-a-Service portal -TaaS is a model of software testing, where a provider undertakes software testing for customers as a service on demand.Through the portal, potential customers would be able to browse, request for quotes and purchase services online Source: News

Maveric Systems, an independent software testing specialist, is expanding its presence in UK and Europe of testing services for Metro Bank Source: News

India's leading event for Software Testing/QA on Saturday, this time in Chennai - Software Testing Conference (SofTec 2011), a leading event for the Software Test and QA Community this time around in Chennai on Jan 29th, 2011 Source: News

AdaCore Releases New GNATemulator Tool for Efficient Embedded Software Testing - GNATemulator, an efficient and flexible emulator solution for testing embedded software applications. Based on the QEMU technology, a generic and open source machine emulator and virtualizer, the new GNATemulator tool allows software developers to compile code directly for their target architecture and run it on their host platform, through an approach that translates from the target object code to native instructions on the host. Source: News

How to test Silverlight 4 Applications using TestComplete 8 - Darshika

2011-02-01T19:00:00.001+05:30

TestComplete 8 provides greater support to verify Microsoft Silverlight 4 application components by using any functional test methodology such as black-box and white-box test mechanisms. In this version of test complete engine can access Silverlight internal objects, methods, properties and fields in order to automate applications.

In order to track Silverlight components by testcomplete engine, first you require to check following “Extend Silverlight Object Tree” checkbox option by navigating to Tools -> Default Project Properties -> Projects -> Open Application -> Silverlight. Subsequent that, the test complete engine will have access to Silverlight objects and their methods, properties and fields and you can employ those elements in your automated tests. (Pls. refer the following screen cap)

Further, you can notice all Silverlight objects and their available methods and properties in the hierarchy of object tree model subsequent to explore browsers such as IE, Firefox.

Now TestComplete introduce a new SlObject method in order to automate applications with Silverlight components. Using this method, users allow obtaining a Silverlight component by its name, which was stated in the application’s source code.

Moreover, TestComplete also offers a SlApplication scripting object that is a wrapper to a Silverlight application’s main class that sum up application defined functionality and inherit methods and properties of the System.Windows.Application class.

As well as the members of this System.Windows.Application class contains the SlClasses property. This property assist you for scripting interface to namespaces and assemblies classes included in your Silverlight application package in the.xap file.

Now Testcomplete provide great opportunity to access static non visual objects and their public members by using SlClasses property. In addition to functional testing, this special feature allows you to perform unit/web component performance testing by using application’s internal classes and their associates.

Hope that the above mentioned features will facilitate you easily creates more powerful automated tests for your Silverlight applications.

To download TestComplete 8 Trial

Source: Success with TestComplete Test Automation

Plagiarism at its best!

2011-01-31T08:55:00.000+05:30

This is a snapshot of what I recently came across and was shocked how people could just copy others work and claim that it is theirs (The famous QTP Unplugged - By Tarun Lalwani was copied by Mr Kandasamy without even changing the name of the book!)

Mr. Kanakarajan Kandasamy is currently on the employee of Novita Soft Solutions, Bangalore. He have around 3 years experience in manual & automation testing areas such as .net, java, web application, etc..., he obtained his bachelors degree in Information Technology from: Anna University, Chennai. His areas of interest are Multimedia and CRM. He can be reached @ msgs2kanak@gmail.com

Tarun: Please welcome Mr Kandasamy in successfully copy pasting some original work from my book and claiming it as his own. Recently the below content was reported to me
http://www.lulu.com/product/hardcover/quicktest-professional-92/5552565

Kandasamy: hi Mr.Tarun...
have u read that book..i will took result data tables and resultes from your book remaing thing are my own..
those thing are nice thats y?...for that i will say sorry to u..and i will remove those thing from my book..
actualy im not able to reach u..tarun pls allow me to present those topics in my book..
thnks & regards,
kanakarajan

Kandasamy's reply again:

hello,
again im going to publish my book..
all the contents are my own..u just mind it..
this time if this ur create any problem i will not keep quite..
there are lot of difference between ur thoughts and my thoughts..
i dont give details about my book..if u have any doubt mail me..
i saw your SQA forum..u didnt know my book details how come u say that im copy paste special..mind ur words..dont try to spoil my name..wat do u thinking about me..
again im telling suppose if your do any thing wrong i will not keep quite..

regardes,
kanakarajan

Read on it's hilarious :-)
Source: SQA FORUMS

All time good software testing books!

2011-01-27T15:30:00.000+05:30

Here is a list of all time favorite software testing books in no particular order:

General Testing Books
Marnie Hutcheson, 'Software Testing Fundamentals' Wiley, April 2003
Erik van Veenendaal, 'The Testing Practitioner' UTN Publishers, Sept 2002
Paul Gerrard and Neil Thompson, 'Risk-based e-business Testing' Artech House, 2002
Louise Tamres, 'Introducing Software Testing' Pearson Education, 2002
Cem Kaner, James Bach and Bret Pettichord, 'Lessons Learned in Software Testing' Wiley, 2002
Martin Pol, Ruud Teunissen and Erik Van Veenendaal, 'Software Testing: a guide to the TMap Approch' Addison Wesley, 2002
Rick D. Craig and Stefan P. Jaskiel, 'Systematic Software Testing' Artech House, 2002
Ron Patton, 'Software Testing' Sams Publishing, 2001
John Watkins, Testing IT: an off-the-shelf testing process' Cambridge University Press, 2001
William E. Perry, 'Effective Methods for Software Testing' Wiley, 2000
Robert V. Binder, 'Testing Object-Oriented Systems' Addison Wesley, 1999
William E. Perry and Randall W. Rice, 'Surviving the Top Ten Challenges of Software Testing' Dorset House, 1997
Ed Kit, 'Software Testing in the Real World' Addison Wesley, 1995
Brian Marick, 'The Craft of Software Testing' Prentice-Hall, 1995
Boris Beizer, 'Black Box Testing' Wiley, 1995
Paul Jorgensen, 'Software Testing: a craftsman's approach' CRC Press, 1995
Mark Roper 'Software Testing' McGraw-Hill Book Company, 1994
Cem Kaner, Jack Falk and Hung Quoc Nguyen, 'Testing Computer Software' Van Nostrand Reinhold, 1993
Boris Beizer, 'Software Testing Techniques' Wiley, 1990
M A Ould and C Unwin (eds) Testing in Software Development British Computer Society Monographs in Informatics series by Cambridge University, 1986
Bill Hetzel, 'The Complete Guide to Software Testing' Collins, 1985
Glenford Myers, The Art of Software Testing Wiley Interscience, 1979

Some new books on Software testing (Emphasizing Agile and Automation) :
How We Test Software at Microsoft : Alan Page, Ken Johnston, Bj Rollison
Fit for Developing Software: Framework for Integrated Tests by Rick Mugridge
Everyday Scripting with Ruby: For Teams, Testers, and You by Brian Marick
Testing Extreme Programming by Lisa Crispin
Continuous Integration: Improving Software Quality and Reducing Risk by Paul M. Duvall
Test Driven Development: By Example by Kent Beck
A Practitioner's Guide to Software Test Design by Lee Copeland
How to break software - a practical guide to testing Whittaker
Just Enough Software Test Automation Mosley and Posey
Software Test Automation: Effective use of Test Execution Tools, Fewster Graham
Implementing Automated Software Testing: How to Save Time and Lower Costs While Raising Quality by Elfriede Dustin, Thom Garrett, and Bernie Gauf

Exploratory Software Testing: Tips, Tricks, Tours, and Techniques to Guide Test Design by James A. Whittaker

Test Management Books
Rex Black, 'Critical Testing Processes' August 2003
Rex Black, 'Managing the Testing Process' Microsoft Press, 1999
Tim Koomen and Martin Pol, 'Test Process Improvement (TPI)' Addison Wesley, 1999
Martin Pol and Erik van Veenendaal, 'Structured Testing of Information Systems: an introduction to TMap' Kluwer, 1998
T C Royer, 'Software Testing Management' Prentice Hall, 1993

Test Automation
Hans Buwalda, Dennis Janssen and Iris Pinkster, 'Integrated Test Design and Automation' Addison Wesley, 2001
Mark Fewster and Dorothy Graham 'Software Test Automation' Addison Wesley, 1999
Elfriede Dustin, Jeff Rashaka and John Paul Automated Software Testing Addison Wesley, 1999

Others
Lisa Crispin and Tip House, 'Testing Extreme Programming' Addison Wesley, 2002
Kent Beck, 'Test Driven Development' Addison Wesley, 2002
Peter Zadrozny, 'J2EE Performance Testing' Expert Press, 2002
Alan Cooper, 'The Inmates are Running the Asylum' SAMS, 1999

SendKeys - Cheat Sheet

2011-01-20T14:55:00.002+05:30

A quick cheatsheet for all the characters that can be sent using the sendkeys method:
e.g:

set WshShell = CreateObject("WScript.Shell")

'Control+Shift+End

WshShell.SendKeys "^+{END}"

'Control+O

WshShell.SendKeys "^o"

Some common egs:
1. a and b are pressed, send the string argument : “(ab)”
2. To Send same letter multiple times : “{a 10}”
3. To Send ALT Tab : wshell.sendkeys ” %{TAB}”
4. To Send ALT and space : wshell.sendkeys “%{ }”
5. TO Send char : wshell.Sendkeys “(a)”
6. Right Click of Mouse : Wshell.SendKeys “+{F10}”
7. Mouse Down : wshell.sendkeys “{DOWN}”
8. Mouse UP : wshell.sendkeys “{UP}”

Key	Argument
BACKSPACE	{BACKSPACE}, {BS}, or {BKSP}
BREAK	{BREAK}
CAPS LOCK	{CAPSLOCK}
DEL or DELETE	{DELETE} or {DEL}
DOWN ARROW	{DOWN}
END	{END}
ENTER	{ENTER} or ~
ESC	{ESC}
HELP	{HELP}
HOME	{HOME}
INS or INSERT	{INSERT} or {INS}
LEFT ARROW	{LEFT}
NUM LOCK	{NUMLOCK}
PAGE DOWN	{PGDN}
PAGE UP	{PGUP}
PRINT SCREEN	{PRTSC}
RIGHT ARROW	{RIGHT}
SCROLL LOCK	{SCROLLLOCK}
TAB	{TAB}
UP ARROW	{UP}
F1	{F1}
F2	{F2}
F3	{F3}
F4	{F4}
F5	{F5}
F6	{F6}
F7	{F7}
F8	{F8}
F9	{F9}
F10	{F10}
F11	{F11}
F12	{F12}
F13	{F13}
F14	{F14}
F15	{F15}
F16	{F16}

Key	Special Character
SHIFT	+
CTRL	^
ALT	%

Test Suite Batch Converter (Selenium IDE) 1.5

2011-01-18T17:10:00.000+05:30

For all the selenium lovers here is an amazing add-on that can convert one or more test suites (and included test cases) from the html format to any another format that is supported by the Selenium-IDE

Highlights:

The resulting test suites and test cases will have the appropriate file extensions for the selected language for supported formats.
The names will also be sanitized to make them legal identifiers for most languages.

To know more and download follow this link Test Suite Batch Converter

Shortcuts - MMC and Internet Explorer Navigation

2011-01-17T22:30:00.001+05:30

Some really nice shortcuts that might help in automation.
Adding more to the previous post on Shortcuts that help in automation!

Microsoft Management Console (MMC) Main Window Keyboard Shortcuts

CTRL+O (Open a saved console)
CTRL+N (Open a new console)
CTRL+S (Save the open console)
CTRL+M (Add or remove a console item)
CTRL+W (Open a new window)
F5 key (Update the content of all console windows)
ALT+SPACEBAR (Display the MMC window menu)
ALT+F4 (Close the console)
ALT+A (Display the Action menu)
ALT+V (Display the View menu)
ALT+F (Display the File menu)
ALT+O (Display the Favorites menu)
MMC Console Window Keyboard Shortcuts
CTRL+P (Print the current page or active pane)
ALT+Minus sign (-) (Display the window menu for the active console window)
SHIFT+F10 (Display the Action shortcut menu for the selected item)
F1 key (Open the Help topic, if any, for the selected item)
F5 key (Update the content of all console windows)
CTRL+F10 (Maximize the active console window)
CTRL+F5 (Restore the active console window)
ALT+ENTER (Display the Properties dialog box, if any, for the selected item)
F2 key (Rename the selected item)
CTRL+F4 (Close the active console window. When a console has only one console window, this shortcut closes the console)

Microsoft Internet Explorer Navigation

CTRL+B (Open the Organize Favorites dialog box)
CTRL+E (Open the Search bar)
CTRL+F (Start the Find utility)
CTRL+H (Open the History bar)
CTRL+I (Open the Favorites bar)
CTRL+L (Open the Open dialog box)
CTRL+N (Start another instance of the browser with the same Web address)
CTRL+O (Open the Open dialog box, the same as CTRL+L)
CTRL+P (Open the Print dialog box)
CTRL+R (Update the current Web page)
CTRL+W (Close the current window)

Will add more shortcuts that might help in automation as and when possible ....

Skillset - Sr QA Engineer for Agile

2011-01-13T16:33:00.001+05:30

Here is what a company is looking for in a Senior QA engineer for an Agile Project:

Key Responsibilities

Responsible for management and coordination of all testing activities on assigned projects including definition of testing approach, test effort estimation, progress and status reporting, training and education on D&B QA processes and tools. Educates technology teams on their responsibilities/accountabilities for the purpose of achieving on-time and quality deliverables.
Through definition of the project test strategy, the Senior QA Engineer will identify the customer and business risks associated with project development and identify how the test approach will mitigate the identified risks. The Senior QA Engineer will also define a test approach in support of various software development methodologies including Agile.
Accountability for management and tracking of project level testing risks ensuring timely communication of impacts to Project Managers. Defines reporting metrics and documents non-compliance to policies, process and standards and assists in their resolution
Works with QA Center of Excellence to establish internal IT service quality control standards, policies and procedures.

Skills and Experience Required

Degree educated or equivalent in Computer Science or related field with Quality Assurance certifications such as ISEB or ISTQB is desirable
Experience working in an Agile environment in particular Scrum
Web services testing experience
Web UI Automation experience
Understanding and exposure to TDD practices
Some exposure to Load Testing, Performance Testing, Security Testing
Understanding of Continuous Integration
Understanding of the Agile manifesto
At least five years experience in Software Quality Assurance.
A proven track record in cross group management with demonstrated abilities to get results using defect containment practices, test automation and continuous improvement initiatives.
Ability to negotiate with business and technology partners to leverage synergies and raise the level of quality in D&B projects and products.

Tools

SOATest, SoapUI, Other Web Services testing tools
Selenium, QTP, RIATest, Other Web based UI automation tools
Fitnesse - Cucumber, Other BDD test tools
Rally

Selenium wait for AJAX (the right way!!!) - Agile Software Testing

2011-01-11T23:07:00.000+05:30

Ajax! Ajax! Ajax!!!!
You cannot go to a website without running into some form of Ajax. It’s great and all, but if you are trying to test a website with Selenium, this becomes an issue. Selenium will wait for the page to load, but is rather clueless when it comes to Ajax.
After spending several painful hours looking for a way to make a “wait_for_ajax” function, I found several solutions that do not work.
1 – Put sleep in your test.
Well obviously this is the simplest solution, but also the worst. We don’t know how long a request will take to load, what if the server is slow?
2- Use “waitForElement” command built into selenium
This is a better solution; we wait for a certain element, which is part of the Ajax response to appear before moving on. The problem with this solution is that we need to always know which element needs to load. This becomes a headache for us normal people with extra large web applications to support.
SOLUTION!
Here is the solution I stopped on. I won’t take credit for making it, but I’ll take some credit for compiling it all in one place. To be honest I have not seen it done yet, the only thing I’ve seen was for bits and pieces but not the whole problem.
To solve this problem, what we have to do is ask the browser to tell us how many active connections to the server are present. Then we sit and wait for that number to become 0. At this point we know that all Ajax requests went through and done, and we can move on in the test. (If you have a webapp that contains non-stop Ajax request to constantly update everything, you have my sympathy.)

Step 1: Figure out which Javascript library your application uses
This is important one, which had me stomped for a long time. Different libraries (Prototype, Dojo, jQuery) use different methods to retrieve the connection info.

Step2: Create the wait_for_ajax method

def wait_for_ajax(timeout=5000)
js_condition = “”
$selenium.wait_for_condition(js_condition, timeout)
end

Let’s break this one down.

We have a default value of 5000 milliseconds for this method, but user can up or down it as they need.
js_condition will be a string, which will contain a selenium call to the browser’s javascript. It will be a javascript conditional that will wait for active connections to be 0, and then return “true”
$selenium.wait_for_condition is the method that will sit and wait for the javascript query to return “true” before letting you move on.

Step 3: Getting the right JS query for your library.
This part was the one, which took me the longest to figure out. But I’ll give you all the answers here. Different libraries use different functions to check incoming connection, so pick the right one for you.
jQuery: “jQuery.active”
Prototype: “Ajax.activeRequestCount”
Dojo: “dojo.io.XMLHTTPTransport.inFlight.length”

Step 4: Put together the JS search string
“selenium.browserbot.getCurrentWindow().” + library specific string + “ == 0”
Final string for jQuery will look like this
js_condition = “selenium.browserbot.getCurrentWindow().jQuery.active == 0”

Step 5: Put the method all together and enjoy

def wait_for_ajax(timeout=5000)
js_condition = “selenium.browserbot.getCurrentWindow().jQuery.active == 0”
$selenium.wait_for_condition(js_condition, timeout)
end

UPDATE: Thanks TIM!!

If using Selenium IDE, here is a way to access the AJAX Libraries
selenium.browserbot.getUserWindow()
And to check the JQuery active records
selenium.browserbot.getUserWindow().$.active == 0

Source: Agile Software Testing - Dima Kovalenko

ClickOnText in QTP

2011-01-10T18:41:00.003+05:30

There are times when QTP forces us to use alternative methods to try and access objects which are not recognized as standard objects, and do not fall under any Class in QTP.

One such method is the "GetTextLocation" used in conjunction with the "Click" method.

Example:

strFound =Window(“”).Dialog(“”).GetTextLocation (“OK” ,x1,y1,x2,y2)
If strFound = True Then
Window(“”).Dialog(“”).Click (x1+x2)/2 ,(y1+y2)/2
Else
'Report a Failure
End If

How about replacing the above code with just one line of code that does everything internally to get the x1,y1,x2,y2 co-ordinates and gives us options to choose left/right, single/double click.
Here you go:

Window(“”).Dialog(“”).Clickontext “OK”,x1,y1,x2,y2,true,micRightbtn,false

Syntax for ClickOnText :
ClickOnText(TextToFind, Left, Top, Right, Bottom, MatchWholeWordOnly,ButtonToClick,DoubleClick)

Flex Objects not recognized by QTP - QTP Advanced

2011-01-06T22:52:00.005+05:30

This is a commonly seen issue that QTP is not recognizing a particular flex object even though you have installed the Adobe Flex Plug-in and the library files are deployed with the flex build. There could be many ways to resolve this. The object could be recognized as a win object, macromedia flash object or a basic flex object like the one shown below.

I have a checklist that may help in resolving this:

1. Have you installed the flex plug in correctly? My blog below should help you verify that:
http://qtpadvanced.blogspot.com/2011/01/verify-install-of-flex-plug-in-for-qtp.html

2. Have you selected the required add ins for your application? Typically for a flex based web application requires flex, web and activex plug ins selected in the QTP's Add-in manager. Remember that QTP add-in manager loads at run time only and if you are not seeing this at start-up then it could be disabled within QTP Tools-> Options -> General.

3. If the object is only partially recognized by QTP and if it is an input field that can accept keyboard inputs they try the QTP SendKey method on that object. This uses the object.Type method to send keyboard inputs. If this works then this should knock off most of the text input objects.

4. The object could have been configured to work based on user action. For example a small window could open with options when user selects that object/ clicks on it. There could be two such possibilities:
a> An input field coded by developers by combining more than one standard flex components. Example: A spark.components.TextInput can be combined with spark.components.Group, spark.components.PopUpAnchor and a spark.components.List making it kind of a search-able intelligent field that loads the list based on user input.
b> The component is a custom component that has inherited the standard flex component. In such cases this may require "Instrumentation" of this component. This necessitates the developers to create a delegate class for this component which sends flex automation events that QTP can intercept while recording.
This adobe site link should give you insight into the instrumenting custom components:
http://livedocs.adobe.com/flex/3/html/functest_components2_11.html

Also check to make sure that the object in question has a class definition entry in the automation xml file. This link should give you more information on the class definition entry:
http://livedocs.adobe.com/flex/3/html/functest_components2_15.html#178953

5. There are a few cases available in the HP knowledge base which may be worth looking at but this may or may not help you resolve your problem. HP however states clearly that the plug-in is developed, maintained and supported by Adobe and that Adobe is the point of contact for any issues with respect to QTP and Flex automation.

6. Check in the Adobe Bug and Issue management system which is meant for public to log in and create or search issues. Searching this database could be very useful since there are a huge number of bugs logged and resolved by Adobe.
Here is the link: http://bugs.adobe.com/flex/
This requires registration to create or search bugs logged with Adobe. Just register and you can look into them.

To install flex plug-ins follow this link

Source: QTP Advanced - Kashyap

Testing News - Jan 4th 2011

2011-01-04T23:20:00.002+05:30

IN Media Begins Software Testing Phase with Learning Partner Mount Knowledge - It's a new e-learning software system, on it's popular Windows 7 Tablet PC with IN Media's new e-learning partner Mount Knowledge Holdings, Inc. Both companies are exploring the co-marketing opportunities in Asia with the integration of educational software on this new Tablet PC e-learning platform.Source: News

Moolya Software Testing Private Limited Offering Brainual Software Testing Services Launched in India - Tired of seeing the industry get confused over Manual versus Automation for testing, this Bangalore based startup decided to use “Brainual” approach. Source: News

Software Testing club for Germany - Talk, discuss and promote all testing things going on in Germany. Source: News

Revolution IT Announces Its Acquisition of Adelaide-based Independent Test Services Pty Ltd - Revolution IT, Australia’s leading application quality management company, has acquired Adelaide based specialist software testing firm Independent Test Services Pty Ltd. Source: News

Simple way to estimate automation effort required

2011-01-03T18:17:00.006+05:30

Classify Test cases into:

Simple
Medium
Complex

Simple Test cases are which have:

< 5 actions
< 3 Components / Functions
< 5 Verifications

Medium Test cases are which have:

< 7 actions
< 5 Components / Functions
< 10 Verifications
< 15 steps

Complex Test cases are which have:

> 7 actions
> 5 Components / Functions
> 15 Verifications
> 20 steps

Factors that affects test automation estimation in general:

Framework Used
Application Technology
Test Environment
Test Scope
Test Automation Skill-set
Custom Objects not recognized by the tool

I'm in software testing eBook - Shivakumar Mathivanan

2010-12-29T18:58:00.001+05:30

Daily Testing Tip and Software Testing Club have launched an eBook recently. I’m extremely happy to see the eBook created with one simple but powerful idea which turned into a fabulous eBook for a great cause. The idea was a twitter challenge prompted by Daily Testing Tip's Anne-Marie Charrett to complete the phrase "If I were a test case I would..." The response was overwhelming to tribute for a cause.

The cause is to help Chandrashekar B.N (Chandru). Chandru is a passionate tester and we testers are contributing our sincere prayers and money to beat his Blood Cancer. Yes, Chandru is affected with Acute Lymphoblastic Leukemia. For more information please continue surfing more web links here: http://helpchandru.com | http://bit.ly/9LyGyi | http://bit.ly/cW0u6k .You're helping hands are equally better as you're praying lips. Please help Chandru. Thank you!

@xploresqa is Shiva Mathivanan:
I was patiently going through each sections of eBook page-by-page. However, I was impatient to check whether I have made my five responses up for eBook?. I typed CTRL + F in my QWERTY keyboard to get where I wanted to reach. Yes I have made it. My twitter name @xploresqa along with my 3 responses was featured in software testing eBook. I smiled with pleasure :) . Thank you @charrett for this wonderful initiative.

3/5:
I am glad to see my name in popular software testing eBook. Out of my 5 responses you can find 3 of them in the eBook which you gonna download shortly. Those were:

Download eBook for Free:
It contains over 200 interesting responses and cartoons (created by Cartoon Tester) from the testing community answering and completing the following sentence: "If I were a test case, I would...".Please do have a read. There are some really great responses there. Download it for free here - http://bit.ly/dPpiXC

Enjoy reading testing eBook!

Source: Shivakumar Mathivanan - blogspot

Why do performance testers need to know business? - The Performance Testing Zone

2010-12-27T10:24:00.000+05:30

Well the question does seem easy enough at the first look. This is what the managers across the board have been crying hoarse. Testers need to know business. Or else how can they test? Agreed. But when it comes to performance testers, does this hold good?

From a performance testing standpoint, what does a normal performance testers do? In almost all cases, the only way where the critical business flows are identified is via the hits on the web server. If it is a new application, most of the time, the business will have a fair idea of which flows will be critical and those will be handed down to the performance testers.

Now our performance tester will come in and write scripts, designs the scenario based on the requirements and executes the test. During the analysis, the following things will be looked at.

1. Server Health
2. Performance issues in code
3. SLAs

So keeping this in mind where does the business come in? Does it really matter to the performance tester to understand the business? The only that matters to him is whether the SLA has been achieved or if there are some hidden performance bugs which may crop up apart from the server health. Everything related to do with the technology and almost nothing with business except the SLAs, if there are any. Experienced performance testers, do not even need to see the flow and they can make the script robust. On the other hand a functional tester cannot do without knowing the business, with the automation engineer falling somewhere in between these two extremes. Is this the correct way of looking at it?
Now coming to the answer to the question in the title of the post. Every business for its survival have to create a positive impression on its customers/clients. Any customer who interacts via a business transaction takes with him/her an experience. And this experience is what makes the customer comes back again and again building a relationship with the business. Out in a retail shop, businesses control this by having good sales force, good ambience, etc. However, online the only experience that a user can get is the look and feel of the application, ease of traversing and the speed with which the customer’s job is done. Thus performance testers directly impact the bottom-line of the business as they are responsible for this user experience. Thus it becomes imperative for performance testers to know the business, from where the revenue comes to ensure the application creates a good user experience which in turn helps the business to grow!
PS: The other testing is also equally important. However, I just wanted to bring out the importance of a business knowledge for performance testers and their impact on business which is much more than what most performance testers tend to believe.

Source: Dishit D

QTP VS Selenium - QA Blog

2010-12-21T22:57:00.000+05:30

My company was using QTP to do the test automation for the past 3-4 years. But we are now moving to cucumber and selenium Webdriver. This blog is about why we are moving away from QTP in my company.

One of the main reason that we move from QTP is that it is a reactive approach of writing test automation. The product is finished and the tester starts writing the automation test. Only the tester writes the automation. With cucumber and selenium , writing automation test is a joint effort between the developers and the testers. The testers write the test cases in cucumber scenario format, then the developers write the steps definition. This way, everyone is contributing and everyone is reviewing the test cases.

In our case, our QTP automation tester left the company and the QTP vbs code is hard to maintain and to read compared to cucumber and ruby code. I have tried to read QTP code to try to convert the test to cucumber and it is just taking quite a lot of time to just understand what the scripts do. With cucumber, selenium webdriver reading what the tests do only take 1-2 minutes as cucumber scenarios describe the behaviour of the system. With cucumber and selenium, everyone is contributing to the automation code and therefore knowledge is being transferred all the time.

QTP is very costly while cucumber, selenium webdriver is free.

Is there any version control in QTP? In our case, we put the automation test code (cucumber, selenium webdriver) as part of the system source code so the automation code is sourced controled.

We can develop the automation code in Windows, Ubuntu, Mac or in any other platforms that you like. This is another topic, but in our case everyone is moving away from windows as well especially the developers which is why QTP is abit useless as you can use Windows only.

Continous Integration is also an ease. We use hudson to automatically run the automation test whenever there is a new build so the developers can get an instant feedback of their changes. QTP just can't do this.

Selenium webdriver can do alot more tests than the previous version (selenium rc) including java script requests and ajax test.

Getting a support answer is very fast in the open source community. Also, you have access to the source code. Since it is a joint effort to write the automation test, we are able to solve alot of issues together.

Other IT departments in our company are already ditching QTP in favor of cucumber and selenium and we never want to go back to QTP after this.

I believe QTP have other benefits as well that I do not know. However, in our case using cucumber and selenium webdriver is more relevant and better than using QTP.

Source: QA Blog - Bagas

Shortcuts that help in automation !

2010-12-20T11:43:00.003+05:30

There are a lot of situations wherein we use shortcuts as a workaround while automating. Here are some shortcuts for windows and Microsoft apps:

P.S: Click on the image and download for quick referencet apps:

Code to get attribute values from an xml

2010-12-17T15:18:00.001+05:30

Was facing a problem in finding the attributes in an xml file, Here is the code of how to solve that:

Const XMLDataFile = "C:\Test.xml"
Set xmlDoc = CreateObject("Microsoft.XMLDOM")
xmlDoc.Async = False
xmlDoc.Load(XMLDataFile)
Dim strAttribute

Set nodes = xmlDoc.SelectNodes("/Path till the node where the attribute is present")
For i = 0 To(nodes.Length -1)
strAttribute= nodes(i).getAttribute("Attribute Name")
MsgBox "Node #" & (i + 1)& ": " & strAttribute
Next

SampleXml

Hope this helps!

QTP - Hybrid Automation Frame Work - Bharath

2010-12-15T22:29:00.001+05:30

What is Automation Framework?

Framework is a wrapper around complex internal architecture which makes end user to interact with the system easily. It also define guidelines and set standards for all phases of ADLC (Automation Development Life Cycle).

This “Dual Function” (Hybrid) framework is a combination of three frameworks (Functional Decomposition, Data Driven, Keyword Driven) and (re-usability, advanced error logic, custom QTP methods, dual function) techniques.

Key features of Dual function Framework

1. Re-usability, low maintenance design (Dual Function).
2. Support different application environments (Development, Quality Control, production) and custom client settings.
3. Externally Configurable - Execute all the test cases, execute only failed test cases, execute test cases by test case id, execute test cases by using flags...can be configured in different ways.
4. Self Configurable and can run unattended with out results being overwritten.
5. Better ROI (Return Of Investment).
6. Real time status monitoring…display detail status during the test execution and automatically close the pop-up status in x sec.
7. Test status reporting in three ways…detailed, high level and summary log file.
8. System automatically send email notifications with test results once the test is complete.
9. Screen Capture on failed test step, notified in the test case itself, assign unique name and stored in the separate folder for easy accessing.
10. Automation test cases resemble manual test cases (Just replace with keywords and test data)
11. Easy way of creating test cases with test case generators (Select keywords from drop down).
12. Easy to maintain and develop scripts (DP, Custom Methods and Dual Function).
13. Test execution time stamp for each step, so that we can easily trace when the test was executed.
14. Same script can be executed on QTP 9.2, 9.5 and 10.0. Backward, forward compatibility.
15. If the test is running in different location, system automatically identify the place of execution using System IP. If the IP is unknown not in the defined list or changed, it would publish the IP address in the results.
16. If object is missing or object properties got changed on the application, system will notify object is missing and proceed with the next test case. This will not stop the test execution.
17. Calculate each page response time automatically.
18. Framework is designed in such a way that it can be initiated using AOM script or directly run using QTP GUI especially useful during debugging or script creation.
19. It would automatically stop automatically if specific number of test cases got failed in sequence, this will help us know there is serious problem in the application.
20. Multi language support.
21 . Sending test results as SMS.
22. It would automatically add new library files.
23. As the entire code reside in library files, total size of the framework is very small. This will help us to easily copy, backup and upload into version control tools.
24. Automatic results archiving facility, old results will not erased.

Advantages of Dual Function Framework and ROI (Return Of Investment)

1. Reduce testing time.
2. Improve testing productivity.
3. Improve product quality
4. Reduce QA costs.
5. Consistent test results.
6. Calculate page response time of all the pages.
7. Schedule test runs.

Frame Work Folder Structure

Framework contain different files associated with different functionality, all the files to be placed in the corresponding folders; so that it is easy to maintain.

Note: Framework can't identify the folders if folder names get renamed, except sub folders created under "AutomationTestDocuments".

AutomationTestDocuments folder contain sub folders relating to each test. If we have two tests, there will be two sub folders. Create new folders as per the test requirement. There is no restriction on the folder name.

Each test (ProductionLoginTesting from the above screen shot) contain 2 Files (Startup, Control) and 3 sub-folders (AutomationTestCases - contain test cases; ExecuationLog - system automatically create two new files once test is complete, based on the configuration, Test summary.txt and Response time.xls; ScreenShots - contain application screen shots, if there are any errors. It would automatically assign unique name with time stamp for each screen shot and notified in the test step itself.

Config folder contain xls files containing custom client settings.

ExecutedScripts folder contain copy of the test folder after execution. If we run the same test again and again (schedule on daily basis) results are over written. In order to preserver the test results, framework will copy the test folder into newly created folder with time stamp, once the test got completed.

Frame_WorkGep folder contain QTP code of one action "KickOff" with single line of code "Call StartUP". Entire project code code reside in the VBS file.
Following are the reasons for choosing this kind of design.
1. VBS file are very light in terms of size.
2. Framework is entirely based on DP (Descriptive programming).
3. We can easily implement any configuration management tool.

Library folder contain application libraries which contain code relating to keyword functions and contain sub folder called "CoreLibraries" that contain files corresponding to actual framework only.

Dual Function Framework Architecture

Note: High-level design intended to show in a simple manner. Many other scripts are called between intermediate stages.

QTP AOM Script

1. vbs file created using AOM.

2. Attached to windows scheduler.

3. Identify the place of execution using system IP. If script is executed on new location, it would consider IP address as place of execution.

4. As there are many tests under "AutomationTestdocuments", script need to be updated with the test folder name and path that we are planning to execute.

5. Script will open the QTP and associate the test specified in the step 4.

6. Two parameters are passed as environment variables (location and test path).

7. Copy the results in "ExecutedScripts" folder to protect results from overwriting, if initiated through AOM script only.

8. Test can also be executed in standalone mode without AOM script, especially useful during test creation and debugging.

KickOff Action

This is the only QTP action used in the framework, it contain "Call funKickOff" to initiate KickOff script.

KickOff Script

Contain global object declaration, initialization and controlling test execution mode. This script will initiate StartUp script.

StartUp script

This script will configure the framework as per the settings provided in the startup spreadsheet.

Control Script

Start up script will initiate control script. Based on the startup spreadsheet settings, script will read each test case from the control spread sheet and call the driver script with test case id, test case name. This script will also generate real time status of the test in the form of pop-up message and update the test status.

Driver script

Based on the test case id and test case name, it will map the test case lower bound and upper bond, then it will read each line of the test case and call corresponding key word functions.

How lower bound is computed ?

Based on the test case id received from the control script, it will start verifying the line having the keyword "TestCaseID", if ID under P1 (Column F) is matching, then it is treated as lower bound.

How upper bound is computed ?

Once script identify the lower bound, it will start searching the immediate "STOP" key word, this will be considered as upper bound.

Then it will start reading all the keywords between lower and upper bound by calling corresponding key word functions and updating each step.

Application library

These functions will actually manipulate(enter data or perform certain action on the control) the application as per the design and send the status back to the driver script.

To understand different variables that I have created in the framework, look into the function available under this link.

Note: Above scripts contain complex validation and error logic techniques, just gave you high level overview. Following top down approach and each script is independent entity, this will help us to maintain framework with ease and change the functionality without effecting other scripts.

Start-up spreadsheet

Row 1 - Default URL - If you are using the same test in different environments (Development, Quality control, production), just change the URL, scripts would run without any issues. This will help us to run the tests in different environments with very little change.

Row 2 - DB Name - If you are accessing the database through QTP, you can specify the name after creating DSN.

Row 3 - Test Execute Flag - Drop Down values All,Yes,No,Empty - Execute Flag,Check,Test Case Ids

These settings are applied by the control script on the control spreadsheet.

All - Execute all the test cases

Yes(Y) - Execute test case with Y flag

No(N) - Execute test case with N flag

Empty - Execute Flag - Execute test case with empty flag

Check - When selected, it would just generate test report with consolidate pass/fail status (if test is run multiple time, initially all test cases, next failed test cases) without actual execution the test.

Test Case Ids - Execute only specific test case ids.

Row 4 - Test Execution Status Flag - Drop Down values All,Pass,Fail,Bad Inputs,Empty - Execution Flag,Check,Test Case Ids

These settings are applied by the control script on the control spreadsheet.

If we want to control the test based on Pass/Fail status use this control.

All - Execute all the test cases

Pass - Execute test case with Pass status

Fail - Execute test case with Fail status

Bad Inputs - Execute test case with Bad Inputs status

Empty - Execute Flag - Execute test case with empty flag

Test Case Ids - Execute specific test case ids.

Row 3 and 4 can be used in different combination while executing the test, so that desired test cases are executed. Most of the combination's are considered.

Row 5 - Execute Specific Test Case Ids - Mention test case ids that you want to execute, "Test Case Ids" flag need to be selected in Row 3 or 4. This will override all the settings.

Row 6 - Tester Name - Name of the tester who is executing the script, same name appear in control and log files after test execution.

Row 7 - Release no/ Module name.

Row 8 - Test Cycle - Mention test cycle.

Row 9 - Exceptions exist counter - Test would automatically stop once the failed test case count reach the counter value. It doesn't make sense to keep on executing the test with 50 or more failed test cases, some thing gone wrong badly.

Row 10 - Test status pop-up display - Drop down values On,Off,Valid Test Case

On - Always display real time test status pop-up.

Off - Don't display real time test status pop-up.

Valid Test Case - Display while executing valid test case, don't display for invalid test case, determined from the combination of Row 3 and 4 flag settings.

Row 11 - Test status pop-up display (sec) - How may seconds real time test pop-up need to be displayed, automatically close after specified seconds.

Row 17 - Object Highlighting - On/Off

On - It will highlight all the objects during test execution, reduce test execution speed.

Off - No highlighting

Row 18 - Silent Mode - On/Off

On -Framework generate many messages during execution, when test is getting executed unattended, we can suppress these message by selection On.

Off - User need to click OK for each framework message, used during debugging.

Row 19 - Calculate average page response time - On/Off

On - It will generate an excel file with each page response time and store it in the "ExecuationLog" folder. Extra coding required, need to modify excel COM model function as per the requirements.

Off - It will not generate any page response file.

Row 26 - Beep on any click - On/Off

On - Generate beep sound when system select any control.

Off - No beep.

Reason for implementing this feature - One of the developer told me that you are not calculating page response time correctly there is flaw in page synchronization code. In order to prove that I am correct, I have implemented this feature. When system select any action on the control it will generate a beep, once page sync is complete, it will generate different beep. After showing the same to the developer, he agreed that my page response time code is correct.

Control Spreadsheet

Headers highlighted in YELLOW - User need to fill the columns.

Headers highlighted in WHITE - System automatically fill the columns during execution.

One control spread sheet for entire test.

Column 1 - Test Case Id - Each test case is assigned unique id in ascending order only.

Column 2 - Test Case Description - Optional, small description about the test case.

Column 3 - Execute Flag(Y/N/Empty) - Control script will retrieve the settings from the start up spread sheet Row 3 and check the flag. If both flags match, system will execute the test case else it will ignore it. This system will help us to quickly configure which test cases to be executed.

Column 4 - Test case file name - Need to specify the corresponding test case file name. Each test can have multiple test cases if required, so that functionality can be distributed and easy to maintain.

Test case - Group of test steps(procedure) with specific test data to validate a requirement.

Test case file - Group of test cases placed in a file.

Column 5 - Response Time - Consolidated response time of all the test steps under specific test case.

Column 6 - Execution Status - Once test case id is executed, system will update the status with Pass/Fail/Bad Inputs (test data provided to the test steps are incorrect).

We can also use this flag to control test execution. Row 4 start up spreadsheet.

Column 7 - Execution Place or System IP / Status Message - Display execution place/ Error and check point messages, if there are any inconsistencies.

Column 8 - Time stamp - Test execution time stamp in Local time.

Column 9 - Test tester name - As specified in the start up spreadsheet.

Column 10 - Release no/ module name - As specified in the start up spreadsheet.

Test case Spreadsheet

Before Execution

Headers highlighted in YELLOW - User need to fill the columns.

Headers highlighted in WHITE - System automatically fill the columns during execution.

Test case spreadsheet consist of test steps similar to manual test cases.

Column A - Keyword - Perform specific action on the screen like enter data, retrieve data, check point. These keywords are selected from the drop down, not required to type the keywords. Once test case creator select the keyword, based on the design, column F to Q are highlighted and corresponding cells are inserted with comments, these are input parameters P1, P2, P3....P20. "LogInSignon" (Row 118) contain 4 parameters, P1 - User name, P2 - Password, P3 - Credentials are correct, P4 - Language.

After Execution

System start filling columns B, C, D and F during test execution.

Mapping of manual and automation test cases to check the coverage

We can create new column "Automation test case ID" in the manual test cases spreadsheet, so that there will be one to one mapping without missing any functionality.

Test summary log file

Generated and placed in the 'ExecutionLog" folder one test is completed.

It contain following information.
1. Place of execution.
2. Test start and end time with time zone.
3. Total executes test cases (Pass/fail/bad inputs) and ignored test cases (based on start up spreadsheet settings).
4. Star up spreadsheet details.
5. Information relating to sending email notifications.
6. Average page response time (depend on the start up spreadsheet settings)
7. Available PC physical memory before and after execution with time stamp.
8. Test termination message By system completed/ By user/ By exception exist counter.
9. Whether email sent successfully.
10. PC information.

It is a summary of Test results + Framework settings + PC info.

Real-Time status POP-UP message

It provide live health of your test, this can be configured in the start up spread sheet.

Above image is self explanatory.

If your test is running for 2 hours and don't have this feature, you will understand nothing if you look at your running test after one hour. It would be better to implement this feature as per your requirements, not so exhaustively as mentioned above.

Note: Implementing these features will not have any performance bottleneck in terms of execution speed or memory usage.

Test case generator (Keyword sheet to create test cases)

Simple Sheet

Test case generator spreadsheet contain two sheets

1. KeyList - Where you design keywords, same as above screen shot

2. Keyword - Where you create automation test cases by selecting the keywords from the drop down.

Macros are written to connect both sheets

How to create KeyWords?

Lets create keyword for the login screen, where you have User name, Password and Login button.

Flow - Enter user name, Password and select login button.

Keyword name - LoginSignOn

Input Parameters - User name, Password

Assign two parameters P1, P2 under column E and F.

Create cell comments for P1 and P2 as user name and password.

O- Optional parameter

M - Mandate parameter (System will generate "BAD INPUTS" if users don't enter values and execute the script.

Points to be considered while creating Keywords

1. Standard CamelCase format.

2. Keyword granularity (never have same keyword doing same or overlapping functionality).

3. When creating complex keywords choose following format (product name + page Name + functionality)

4. Don't worry about the length of keyword, you are not typing it, just selecting from the drop down. It should be self explanatory.

Advantages of this design.

1. It is not required to enter test object properties in the test case, already implemented in the code.

2. We can created a document which contain screen shot of the page and corresponding keywords. By looking at it any one can create test cases.

3. Generally in keyword driven framework, we can enter one value or fire one method per line; in this design you can enter maximum of 20 values in a single line.

4. It is not required to memorize all the inputs associated with a keyword, Just select the Keywork, it would automatically highlight the parameters and assign cell comments to each parameter, so that you will understand easily what P1, P2...parameters for.

5. Each key word is self explanatory designed using camel case, any person can understand it.

Complex Sheet with lengthy keywords

After creating the core framework, next job would be creating keywords as per the functionality and executing the test.

Continued... QTP - Hybrid FrameWork - Part II

Source: Bharath Marrivada

Zephyr v3.0 - Test Mangement tool

2010-12-14T00:14:00.007+05:30

Zephyr v3.0, an advanced and comprehensive test management system.

Zephyr v3.0 has the following features:

Custom reports generator: Zephyr's new custom report generator makes it simple for every team to be able to run any report they need. The new functionality builds on the existing out of the box functionality which comes with more than 16 drill down reports and metrics.
Extensive API’s: Zephyr's philosophy has always been to integrate with existing infrastructure and not force teams to rip one tool out to replace it with another. With the new extensive API's Zephyr further extends the capability of its platform to support the myriad needs of global software quality teams. The web services API's are fully documented at http://developer.yourzephyr. com.
Enhanced productivity levels/Search Technology: Zephyr's test management solution promotes a new level of organization at the release, project, department and global level. With the 3.0 release, Zephyr debuts a new search technology that searches in the body of fields, not just in the title or subject field. Teams will achieve new levels of productivity.
Trend reporting: With Zephyr's new, first of its kind dynamic trend reports, teams now have the ability to look back at stages of former projects and quantify how long it took to complete the release. With this information in hand, the same teams will now able to plan accordingly for not only current releases, but also for future projects.
Enhanced JIRA integration: Zephyr enhances its one of a kind 2-way JIRA integration by supporting JIRA custom fields. Teams have always been able to enter, search, change, report, analyze and close any defect in JIRA from within Zephyr through optimized testing desktops. With the new release, teams who have customized or plan to customize JIRA will also be able to leverage the robust functionality and achieve higher productivity and efficiencies.

Online help is available at http://support.yourzephyr.com/ product_help/3.0/Zephyr_3.0_ Help.htm

Testing News - Dec 8th

2010-12-08T22:36:00.000+05:30

Announcing the First-Ever Selenium Conference in San Francisco - Sauce Labs, the company co-founded by Selenium creator Jason Huggins, today announced the inaugural Selenium Conference, which will take place on April 1-3, 2011 Source: News

Blueberry Launches Version 3.0 of Its Software Testing Tool for Developers Source: News

HP Intros Application Lifecycle Management 11: a unified system for managing the lifecycle of a key business application when it needs to be built from a variety of services running in heterogeneous environments.Source: News

IBM and QAI Partner to Launch Dual Certification Program in Functional Testing: Leading to Dual Certifications in Software Testing (CSTE) and Rational Functional Testing (RFT)

India currently has approximately over 132,000 professionals working in the Independent Testing Services Business, out of which approximately 65% of the work done, is in the field of Functional Testing. Source: News

Lean as a toolkit towards agility - Ranjan

2010-12-07T22:31:00.001+05:30

Definitely Lean!!

Over the last few years, agile software development processes like XP and Scrum have gained a lot of prominence, and a majority of organizations have tried one of these one time or another. I mention two here - Scrum is an agile management methodology, XP more of agile engineering practices, because on various fora, you will find debates on one over the other, and sometimes hopefully one mixed with the other. Both the methodologies are practical extensions to the agile manifesto, concrete processes that supplement a philosophy. Unfortunately, there seems to be a majority which assumes complete agility is achieved when practicing one of these methodologies or a mix of them. Blindly adopting a methodology is no different from following older so called non-agile practices. Granted there might be immediate visible improvements with better communication and development techniques, this ends up as just a linear function of the ability to change for the better. Given time, if self organized teams do not retrospect and improve on past performances, they hit roadblocks as before, may be just a little further, but they do. The last line of the manifesto -"At regular intervals, the team reflects on how to become more effective, then tunes and adjusts its behavior accordingly" is a statement that is very important, yet ignored, or practiced weakly.

Indeed, what the final tenet on the manifesto encourages a team to do is make sure it is learning and improving its processes over time. Scrum or XP are just basic frameworks which facilitate an initial shift, and then the team must make sure that they choose the right processes under given circumstances to be effective and inclined towards a delivery. During such a process a team might decide to break one or more basic tenets of the framework they choose to follow, if it improves their effectiveness and delivery. For example, YAGNI is a fundamental tenet of XP, but a team might choose to tweak it if they find it necessary to design upfront on certain tasks. Theorists and fanboys will shout foul, but realists and seasoned practitioners will understand the needs to do this. (Having said this, the team must at all times be congnizant of the risks taken when making these decisions, and observe changes closely for a few iterations.) These tenets are not commandments to follow staunchly, they are guidelines to follow a philosophy of continuous improvement to deliver the best value to a customer. They provide a meta-plan, or a planning approach, which is not any more important than responding to change. This realization itself facilitates better localized processes. The argument above is an example of improvement within a process. The shift towards learning from Lean Manufacturing is an excellent example of how not just a team, but the community as a whole looks around for synergies in different workplaces to improve business processes and deliver more value.

The commercialization and marketing of XP or Scrum as a development practice, sadly has not done justice to Agile as a philosophy. As more and more corporations try to join the bandwagon, I have noticed frequent claims of agility subsequent to following an XP or Scrum approach. While adapting to XP and Scrum practices is not wrong, it does benefit a team to do so, but if the team does not understand the underlying philosophy behind the practices, it fails to see a fundamental dimension of growth. By looking at just the practices within the methodology for improvement and not without, it ignores tools and practices that might help itself to improve on a larger scale. Any failures in such a premise becomes then a failure of the process followed, and management decisions being made to repeal processes. Such superficial following is thus harmful for the corporation as it misses out on a good philosophy as it chooses to discard it, based on an implementation fault.

Lean software development is the new kid on the block. Lean manufacturing and Agile Development are very aligned towards each other, for starters both are people centric and concentrate on reducing wastes. As the hype to be Lean increases, similar superficial dabs will increase, some will succeed and some will fail. Should such failures count as failures of the Lean model? Should teams stop striving to be Lean when they figure out that they would not be able to stop the line, or follow another much proclaimed Lean tenet? Shouldn't teams be looking at Lean practices as empowering tools and not laws? By educating itself towards a mindset and not just manifest of it(read Lean), wouldn't a team benefit more?

In fact what a team should figure out is that XP, Scrum and now Lean are just toolkits that facilitate aligned and effective delivery of customer demands. Stand-ups, TDD, Scrum of Scrum, Frequent releases are all a part of a greater toolkit that facilitate agility, and a team should pick and choose what is most effective for itself. Lean, like XP is a set of practices teams have evolved over a period of time to be more effective. It has evolved over prior practices like Taylorism and Fordism at Toyota. The point to note is that Toyota did not invent or create a lean process out of nowhere. They optimized based on a given set of circumstances and experimented new approaches towards manufacturing. That is an instance of pure agility. The current state of Lean is just a product of agility, and thus provides a good toolkit, just like XP and Scrum and other agile manifests do.

By treating these manifests as toolkits, we open up our perspective and become more responsible to better delivery, by following them blindly, we close our eyes and wait for good things to happen, just because we are following a process. Indeed, true agile teams improve continuously. Upon hitting roadblocks, they come up with solutions which are measurable in terms of effectiveness. They break dogma and blind faith to increase effectiveness and thus deliver more for the same dollar spent than the last iteration. And when do they stop looking for improvements? Never.

Source: Ranjan Sakalley

Test Automation tools in the market!!

2010-12-06T22:50:00.000+05:30

Here is not a complete list but almost complete list of functional test automation tools:

Open Source GUI testing tools:

Abbot
AutoHotkey
AutoIt
Canoo
CubicTest is a graphical Eclipse plug-in for writing Selenium and Watir tests.
Dogtail by Red Hat
FitNesse
Linux Desktop Testing Project by freedesktop.org
Maveryx is an automated functional testing, regression testing, GUI testing and data-driven testing tool.
QAliber by QAlibers, free open source for testing applications and web over windows OS
Selenium for Web UI testing
SWTBot functional testing of SWT and Eclipse based applications
Tellurium Automated Testing Framework (runs on top of Selenium).
Watir browser driver for web UI testing
WatiN Web automated testing in .NET

Lots more open source tools here

Commercial GUI testing tools

AutoIt
Automation Anywhere
eggPlant by TestPlant Ltd
GUIdancer by Bredex, for Java (Swing, RCP/SWT, GEF) and HTML
HP QuickTest Professional (QTP) by Hewlett-Packard (formerly by Mercury Interactive)
IBM Rational Functional Tester by IBM
IcuTest GUI unit testing for WPF
iMacros
Network Automation
Phantom Automation Language Microsoft Windows GUI Testing
QF-Test by Quality First Software, for Java/Swing, Eclipse/SWT and HTML only
Ranorex
RIATest for Flex
SilkTest by Micro Focus International (formerly by Segue Software then Borland)
Soatest (absorbed WebKing starting in version 6.0) by Parasoft
Test Automation FX Windows UI testing with Visual Studio
TestComplete by SmartBear Software
TestPartner by Micro Focus
WinRunner by Hewlett-Packard (formerly by Mercury Interactive)
WindowTester by Instantiations for testing Swing, SWT, and Eclipse/RCP based applications

Selenium RC - User Extension.JS - Bharath

2010-12-05T15:27:00.001+05:30

As a Selenium programmer you may require to create new methods or functions that doesn't exist.
One of the best method is by using UserExtension.js. In future posts I will explain about extending the existing selenium class.

Add following libraries to your project, attaching the snap shot.

Create new java class using following code. This example is created on google.com, so that any one can execute the code with out any issues.

What is this program about ?
1. Created new Method "MyClick".
2. Two new functions to calculate page response time (timerStart, timerStop).
3. Open the google page, search for an item and display page response time in Milli seconds for the results page.
Initially I had lot of issues while working with user-extensions, I want to bring clarity to my users by providing this example. There are differences between IDE and RC extensions, read my timer extension post for better understanding.

package package1;

import static org.testng.AssertJUnit.*;
import org.testng.annotations.*;
import com.thoughtworks.selenium.*;


public class Sample2
{
  private static final String Timeout = "30000";
  private static final String BASE_URL = "http://google.com/";
  private static final String BASE_URL_1 = "/";
  private Selenium selenium;
  private HttpCommandProcessor proc;
  
  @BeforeClass
  protected void setUp()throws Exception
   {
     proc = new HttpCommandProcessor("localhost", 4444,

"*iexplore", BASE_URL);
     selenium = new DefaultSelenium(proc);     
     selenium.start();
     selenium.windowFocus();
     selenium.windowMaximize();
     selenium.windowFocus();
   }
    
  @AfterClass(alwaysRun=true)
  protected void tearDown() throws Exception
   {
     selenium.stop();
   }
    
  @Test(groups="search")
  public void test_GoogleSearch() throws Exception
   {
    selenium.open(BASE_URL_1);
    selenium.type("name=q", "selenium HQ");
    System.out.println(proc.doCommand("getTimerStart",

new String[] {"GooglePage"}));
    //selenium.click("btnG"); //selenium command 
    proc.doCommand("myClick",new String[] {"btnG"});

    //user extension for Click ()
    selenium.waitForPageToLoad(Timeout);
    System.out.println (proc.doCommand("getTimerStop",

new String[] {"GooglePage"}));
    Thread.sleep(5000); //Show the page for few seconds 
   }
  @Test(groups="search")
  public void test_GoogleSearch1() throws Exception
   {
    selenium.open(BASE_URL_1);
    selenium.type("name=q", "Bharath Marrivada");
    System.out.println(proc.doCommand("getTimerStart",

new String[]{"GooglePage"}));
    //selenium.click("btnG"); //selenium command
    proc.doCommand("myClick",new String[] {"btnG"});

    //user extension for Click ()
    selenium.waitForPageToLoad(Timeout);
    System.out.println (proc.doCommand("getTimerStop",

new String[] {"GooglePage"}));
    Thread.sleep(5000); //Show the page for few seconds 
   }    
}

UserExtension.js


Selenium.prototype.doMyClick = function(inputParams) 
{
 var element = this.page().findElement(inputParams);
 this.page().clickElement(element);
 return null;
};

var globalTime = new Object();
Selenium.prototype.getTimerStart = function(target) {
 var dt1 = new Date();
 if (target == null || target == "")
 {
  return  ("Target not present so timer was not started");
 } else {
  globalTime[target] = dt1;
  return null;
 }
 delete dt1;
};

Selenium.prototype.getTimerStop = function(target) {
 var dt = new Date();
 if (target == null || target == "")
 {
  return  ("Please specify a target");
 } else if (globalTime [target] == null) {
   alert("called");
  return  ("Start time was not called for " + target);
 } else {
   return  ("Time Passed for " + target + ":" + Math.floor

 (dt - globalTime[target]) + " msec");
   delete globalTime[target]; 
  }
 delete dt;
};

Note: Make sure you create the .js file in the selenium.jar folder.

To execute JavaScript functions from .js file, need to use http command processor "proc.doCommand".
If the function is not returning any value start the function name with "do", else use "get".
Function names are case sensitive, always start with lower case. For "do" function, remove "do" while calling the function from Java.

To start the selenium server use following command.


java -jar selenium-server.jar -userExtensions user-extensions.js

To start the Selenium server quickly, every time instead of going into command prompt, I use following text saved as .vbs file. Double click the file, your selenium server will be up and running. (Modify the folder path)


Dim oShell
Set oShell = WScript.CreateObject ("WScript.Shell")
oShell.run "cmd /K CD C:\selenium-remote-control-1.0.3\

selenium-server-1.0.3 & java -jar selenium-server.jar

-userExtensions user-extensions.js"
Set oShell = Nothing

Enjoy!

Source: All about QTP, LOADRUNER, NeoLoad, Performance&Security Testing, VB Script, Selenium...

Skillset - SDET for web application

2010-12-03T22:24:00.001+05:30

Here is what a company in seattle is looking for in a Automation engineer as a SDET (Software Design Engineer in Test )

We're looking for an experienced engineer who loves test automation - writing real code to test large-scale web systems. You'll join a talented, experienced, fun software team, automating complex and highly-scalable online systems.

Requirements

5+ years of professional experience as a software engineer (either in development or in test) on commercial-grade software in Java, Perl, and/or C++
you need the basics on test strategy and approach
Nice to have: web test and/or development experience - Selenium, Watir, etc. coding really valuable
Nice to have: SQL testing and/or development experience
Nice to have: CS degree or equivalent
Great team member, plays well with others, etc.

We're definitely looking for real development experience!

RefCardz - Do you want to learn faster?

2010-12-02T22:30:00.000+05:30

RefCardz are one of the best ways to learn a process, technology or a tool and James has submitted an interesting collection of the top 5 RefCardz for Testing. These are definite downloads and must haves if you are using any of them:

Selenium 2.0: Using the WebDriver API to Create Robust User Acceptance Tests
PHPUnit: PHP Test-Driven Development - Automated Tools to Improve Your PHP Code Quality
JUnit and EasyMock
Getting Started with Fitnesse
Getting Started with Firebug 1.5

To download these refcardz follow the link below:
Five Great Refcardz For Software Testing

Make your tests agile too: wiki - Trish Khoo

2010-12-01T23:19:00.000+05:30

This is a story about my experience in using a wiki to manage test cases.

Over the past few years, I have been evaluating different test case management approaches and tools. At first I was looking for a one-fits-all solution, but it quickly became apparent that such a dream was impossible to achieve. At Campaign Monitor, we are constantly adapting and improving our test approach to fit each release cycle. So I started focusing on finding a tool that supports our current test approach, but is flexible enough to adapt when the test approach changes to suit a new context.
I have found that the way in which many test tools are designed can force the testers into taking a certain test approach. A wiki is somewhat like a series of blank canvases all linked together, so it seems like a very flexible solution. In practice, this proved to be the case, but was flexibility enough?

We had more freedom in our test cases

We began with a repository of regression test cases in TestLink and a suite of 1000+ automated GUI tests that ran every night. When we decided to try out FitNesse, we stopped adding new test cases to TestLink and added them to a wiki page in FitNesse instead.
The format of our test cases changed as well. TestLink’s interface encourages the user to enter test cases in the format of “Title” “Steps” and “Expected results”. With a blank wiki page, we could write tests in whatever format we desired. So we used Given-When-Then, which is a very concise and easy-to-read format. For example:

As a paying customer
Given that I have added an item to my shopping cart
When I choose to checkout
Then I should be shown a summary of my order
And I should be prompted to pay for my purchase

One thing I like about this format is that it gives the tester a lot of freedom in the way they can run the test. In the example above, it doesn’t specify *how* the paying customer adds items to the cart, or even in what way they are prompted to pay for their purchase. Given the flexible nature of feature requirements on our projects, this suits us very well. In addition, it increases the likelihood that different testers will run the test in entirely different ways.

Everyone was on the same page

This was the first experience I had ever had where developers not only read the test cases without needing to be coaxed into it, but also edited and added to the scenarios. This was probably due to the easy-to-edit nature of the wiki, the easy-to-understand format of the test cases and our good relationship with our developers.
The first time we tried this approach, we wrote a page of test cases that were relevant to a particular developer’s assigned feature. We added a series of questions that we had about the feature to the same wiki page. Then we sent the URL for that page to the developer. The developer read the test cases, answered the questions and added a few more test cases of his own. We had some follow-up questions to some of his responses, so we went to his office to discuss them in person. While discussing, we were able to quickly update the test cases in the wiki page from his computer, and add additional notes that we could expand into new test cases later on.

In a later release, a different developer had not seen the Given-When-Then format before and was initially confused. I went to his office to explain it, and after about 30 seconds of explanation he easily figured it out. So we went through the test cases together, and he modified them and added new ones as we discussed them. Many of the test cases were based on assumptions and he was able to quickly validate them and correct them as necessary.

Using a wiki for test plans had unexpected benefits

I used to write detailed, 20 page test plan documents that nobody ever wanted to read. After realising this was a pointless exercise, these test plans were eventually whittled down to two-paragraph summaries on the company intranet noticeboard. When we started using FitNesse to store test cases, we needed a central document to tell us which tests we would be using for each release, and where they were located. So creating a test plan document in the wiki to hold this information seemed like a sensible thing to do. As it was easily editable, it encouraged me to update it with important information as the release progressed.
The test plans became a guide to the testers for what was testable, what work we had done and what work was remaining. We added a list of high-risk feature areas to the plan and it became a central battle plan for regression testing. The latest version is easily shared with the team just by sending the URL.

Scalability could be an issue

We made a manual test fixture to mark manually run test cases as passed or failed. However, each of these results has to be individually reset so it wasn’t really a scalable solution. It’s worked okay so far due to the small amount of tests and the fact that we only use a subset of the tests for regression, but I expect that it could become a problem as more tests accumulate.

Automation integration was surprisingly disadvantageous

FitNesse is designed to be hooked into an automation tool, such as Selenium. The idea is that tests written in decision tables or even written in sentence form can be run as automated tests. At first it’s a bit tough to get your head around the concept that plain text written in a wiki can magically turn into an automated test. Basically what’s happening is that the automation is using keywords from the wiki text as method names and parameters in the code behind. So the wiki text is like a series of commands and data inputs that is fed into the automated test code. For more information, check out FitNesse’s two minute example.
We tried using it with Selenium and ran into a few issues. First of all, it was a real pain to set up. This was mostly due to lack of clear information about how to set up FitNesse and Selenium with a C# codebase. Second of all, writing tests to suit the FitNesse model turned out to be pretty time consuming. We did get tests working in the end, but I don’t think it suited our style of testing very well. But at least now we have the capability of running automated tests this way, and we can use that if we ever find a situation where it could be an advantage.

More plus than minus

Overall I’ve been pretty happy with this wiki experience and I’m going to stick with it and keep evaluating. Our current plan is to take test cases out of the wiki and add them to the our automated test suite, which runs nightly (independent of FitNesse). For now, I think this may suit us better than running tests from FitNesse itself. This may help address the scalability issues too.

Source: Purple Box Testing

Testing News - Nov 30th

2010-11-30T22:24:00.000+05:30

GUIdancer test tool to become Eclipse project and Open source : Long-time Eclipse member Bredex plans to release core components of its GUIdancer test automation tool as an open source project hosted by the Eclipse Foundation. Source: News
Microsoft is adding private beta group support to the Windows Phone 7 Marketplace, allowing developers to do limited testing of their applications before submitting for full app store inclusion.Source : News
National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) researchers recently released a new and improved bug catching system designed to more efficiently find software glitches during the development process. NIST reported in 2002 that software bugs cost the economy nearly $60 billion even though 50 percent of software development budgets are devoted to testing. Testing every possible variable is not practical. A system with 34 on and off switches, for example, would require 17 billion tests. Source: News

Software Testing! good one - Jagan

2010-11-29T22:42:00.000+05:30

Software Testing - A good read….not intended against any group as such, but still entertaining ... read on ...

A university scholar, Mr. John Smith approaches his friend a software-testing guru telling him that he has a Bachelor in programming, and now would like to learn the software testing to complete his knowledge and to find a job as a software tester. After summing him up for a few minutes, the software-testing guru told him "I seriously doubt that you are ready to study software testing. It's the serious topic. If you wish however I am willing to examine you in logic, and if you pass the test I will help teach you software testing. "

The young man agrees.

Software testing guru holds up two fingers "Two men come down a chimney. One comes with a clean face and the other comes out with a dirty face. Which one washes his face?

The young man stares at the software-testing guru. "Is that a test in Logic?" software testing guru nods.

"The one with the dirty face washes his face," He answers wearily.

"Wrong. The one with the clean face washes his face. Examine the simple logic. The one with the dirty face looks at the one with the clean face and thinks his face is clean. The one with the clean face looks at the one with the dirty face and thinks his face is dirty. So; the one with the clean face washes his face."

"Very clever" Says Smith. "Give me another test"

The software-testing guru again holds up two fingers "Two men come down a chimney.One comes out with a clean face and the other comes out with a dirty face. Which one washes his face?

"We have already established that. The one with the clean face washes his face"

"Wrong. Each one washes his face. Examine the simple logic. The one with the dirty face looks at the one with the clean face and thinks his face is clean. The one with the clean face looks at the one with the dirty face and thinks his face is dirty. So; the one with the clean face washes his face. When the one with the dirty face sees the one with the clean face washing his face, he also washes his face. So each one washes his face"

"I didn't think of that!" Says Smith. " It's shocking to me that I could make an error in logic. Test me again!."

The software-testing guru holds up two fingers "Two men come down a chimney.One comes out with a clean face and the other comes out with a dirty face. Which one washes his face?

"Each one washes his face"

"Wrong. Neither one washes his face. Examine the simple logic. The one with the dirty face looks at the one with the clean face and thinks his face is clean. The one with the clean face looks at the one with the dirty face and thinks his face is dirty. But when the one with clean face sees that the one with the dirty face doesn't wash his face, he also doesn't wash his face So neither one washes his face".

Smith is desperate. "I am qualified to study software testing. Please give me one more test"

He groans when the software-testing guru lifts his two fingers, "Two men come down a chimney. One comes out with a clean face and the other comes out with a dirty face. Which one washes his face?

"Neither one washes his face"

"Wrong. Do you now see, John, why programming knowledge is an insufficient basis for studying the software testing? Tell me, how is it possible for two men to come down the same chimney, and for one to come out with a clean face and the other with a dirty face? Don’t you see?"

Source: Jagan's Eyes "What I See"

Automation maturity - what should a Test Manager focus on? - AnitaG

2010-11-29T00:44:00.000+05:30

Automation is frequently a passionate debate, usually around how much and whether it is effective. But are test managers prepared for the effects of automation as it grows? Instead of focusing on whether or not to automate or by how much, let's focus on what having automation on a test team means for the manager, assuming the team has already decided the correct balance of what needs automated and what doesn't (and in what priority).

The infancy of automation: Initially, a team may say they have automation. I've learned that when I drill down on this, they don't necessarily have test cases automated, but instead they only wrote tools to help with parts of the testing process, like installation/setup/deployment tools or tools for emulating inputs due to a dependency on an unreliable source. There is a difference between writing tools and writing automation (although that can become a blurred line when describing a test harness or execution engine).

Establishing the automation report: As teams get better at automation and their automation grows, managers can benefit by pulling reports from the automation. This is an extremely necessary result of having automation and one that a manager should focus on. At times, I have started generating the reports before the automation is written just to help the team focus on what needs done. This could be as simple as listing the builds, BVT pass rate, and % of BVTs that are automated. One can argue that BVTs should always pass 100%, but let's save that discussion for another time. As the team completes automation for BVTs (Build Verification Tests), I start reporting on functional automation reporting and code coverage numbers.

A significant location change: As the team continues to write automation, the process of them running their growing suite of automation on their office machines starts becoming a bottleneck. It is key that the Test Manager thinks ahead and plans for this with the beginnings of an automation lab. Continuing to run automation in testers' offices takes up machine time and limits the amount of coverage that could be achieved. Using a lab will allow for running your automation on different software and hardware environments to catch those bugs that couldn't be caught by just running on the same machine day-after-day in a tester's office. The automation lab also makes reproducible results an achievable goal because every day the test automation can run on the same group of machines.

The overgrown automation suite: When I have a team that is mature in their processes around writing automation, there are a few different issues that need focus or the automation efficiency starts to suffer. The two biggest problems I have seen is legacy test automation and analysis paralysis.

Legacy automation is automation code that was written years ago by someone probably not on the team anymore. It tests key features in the product, or at least that's what every thinks. The team is usually afraid to change or affect this automation in any way because of concerns that coverage will diminish. But the automation may also make running the whole suite very long. If lucky, it will always pass because investigate a failure may become difficult if nobody on the team knows the code very well. Also, if it always passes, it is questionable if the automation is truly still testing things correctly. Is it cost effective to investigate this automation, verify it's correctness, and modernize it to the current technologies? That depends on many factors within the team.

Analysis paralysis is when too much automation is run on too many machines too frequently. Is that really possible? Yes it is. When that happens and the results come back as anything less than 100% passing (which is always the case), the test team will have to focus on why the automation failed and if it was a bug in the automation code or the product code. Of course that's what they would do. That's part of the expectations when having automation. The key point here is that too much of a good thing can overload the test team to the point that they are blocked from doing anything else because all their time is spent investigating automation failures. But if they don't investigate the failures to understand why the automation results aren't at 100%, is that ok? If your automation passes at less than 100% or bounces around a lot, is it still beneficial to run it? Are you missing key bugs? Those are the questions I ask when in situations like this. I have lots of opinions about this that I will save for later blogs.

I have experienced teams in these different levels of automation development. I've managed teams with no automation, I've managed teams with too much automation, I've managed teams that only ran automation labs and produced results daily. There's not one solution that works. But as a manager, I found that staying aware of how much automation my team has and watching closely if the automation is a benefit or a burden is key to allowing the automation to be effective in improving product quality.

Source: The Colorful and Gray World of Engineering Management

Testing News - 25th Nov

2010-11-25T22:41:00.000+05:30

Growing Demand for Software Testing in the Banking & Finance, Insurance Industries in Indonesia: Maveric Systems Survey Source: News
AppLabs, city-based software testing and quality management company, today announced that it has partnered with TurnKey Solutions, provider of testing solutions for ERP, CRM, and custom software application environments. The partnership will strengthen AppLabs' strong ERP Testing (SAP, Oracle , Siebel , and PeopleSoft) Source : News
The independent TMMi testing methodology, which is an alternative to Capgemini Sogeti's Test Process Improvement (TPI) methodology, will have its level 5, known as optimisation, completed next week. - Source: News
The five levels of TMMi are:

Initial
Managed
Defined
Measured
Optimisation

Brian Osman, Knowledge Engineer at Software Education, has become the first person in Australasia to gain the full suite of International Software Testing Qualifications Board (ISTQB) advanced certifications.- Source: News

XML DOM and Xpath Snippets - Asiq

2010-11-23T22:17:00.001+05:30

In this article I am going to explain about the XML DOM methods and Xpath queries.

The Example XML Document Used For This Article

#1: Finding Elements by Attributes
If you want to access the name of the employee two, write attribute filter condition in your xpath query.
/Employees/Employee[@id='002']

Code:
gStrOrPath="C:\ Test.xml"'Path of your XML
Set gObjXmlOR = CreateObject( "Microsoft.XMLDOM")
gObjXmlOR.Async = "False"
gObjXmlOR.Load(gStrOrPath)
StrXQuery="/Employees/Employee[@id='002']" ' Attribute filter condition in your Xpath query
Msgbox gObjXmlOR.documentElement.selectSingleNode(StrXQuery).Text

The msgbox displays the child element’s text (I.e. Peter).

#2: Finding Elements with Text
Here I have written Xpath query to find the employee Peter’s gender using his name.
/Employees/Employee/name[.='Peter']

Code:
StrXQuery ="/Employees/Employee/name[.='Peter']" ' Text filter condition
Msgbox gObjXmlOR.documentElement.selectSingleNode(StrXQuery). Attributes.getNamedItem("gender").Text

The msgbox displays Sam’s gender as in the XML.

#3: Checking an Element has child or not
To find an element has child or not, then use XML Dom hasChildNodes method.
As per the example XML document, I am finding the employee node has child or not.

StrXQuery="/Employees/Employee[@id='002']
Msgbox gObjXmlOR.documentElement.selectSingleNode(StrXQuery).hasChildNodes

#4: Checking Errors in XML

Set gObjXmlOR = CreateObject("Microsoft.XMLDOM")
gObjXmlOR.async = False
gObjXmlOR.load("Test.xml")
If gObjXmlOR.parseError.errorCode <> 0 Then
MsgBox("Parse Error line " & gObjXmlOR.parseError.line & ", character " & _
gObjXmlOR.parseError.linePos & vbCrLf & gObjXmlOR.parseError.srcText)

End If

Source: XML DOM and Xpath Snippets - Asiq Ahamed

Keyword driven framework architecture in QTP -Bibek

2010-11-21T00:48:00.001+05:30

Framework:A hypothetical description of a complex entity or process-Word Web.
Here, word hypothetical makes it clear that it’s based primarily on surmise rather than adequate evidence.There are no rules and standards on test framework development.It varies from organization to organization and from team to team.Project internal architecture provides a great source of information for organizing the components of our framework.Testing components needs to be well organized to accomplish the task effectively,efficiently and in a systematic order.
We need to develop framework in a way that leads to accomplish the task without much human intervention.The heart of “Keyword driven test automation framework” is common functions that resides within the function library and the keyword acts as it’s brain.Framework must be enough flexible to run with the desired keyword from the pool of available keywords.
well,It’s been my passion to play with electronic chips since my childhood.I can even survive in desert if i get electronic scarps and a screwdriver Hence,I decided to develop a flexible framework looking at the architecture of RADIO that have been rusted on my bedroom for years.
The component used & it’s analogy with RADIO:
QTP has it’s own limitation for loading resources;as it does not allow to load .QRS file in run time,here,it goes off the track from radio tuning mechanism.Once radio is turned on we tune to different stations and adjust it’s volume and rotate/pull up-down it’s antenna to have a clarity.
Here we do just opposite, we first do the appropriate setting and proceed with further run.
How keyword driven framework works:
1.Plug in to environment.
2.Do a little bit settings on test_environment setting file;eg,paths of resources,email configuration,project url,expected time etc.
3.Search & Select appropriate generic keywords from keyword pool.
4.Go
Radio analogy:
1.Plug in to switch board.
2.Search for station
3.Set the volume and adjust the antenna
4.Turn on.
(normally 4 comes before step 2)
1.. 2 …3… Go……..! that’s it.
Details of the Component Architecture are as follows: [Note:the architecture is based on my own assumption(analogy with RADIO),if you find it uncomfortable,kindly scold me with your invaluable suggestions]

1.Start.Exe: Starts the tool using AOM and pass the control to Driver.
2.Application Scenarios: Test plan,test case and test steps.
3.Test Object Description: Pool of test object properties and description.
4.Resources: Repository files for application dependent functions.
5:Mytest: Driver script resides.
6: Session manager: manages the session of the test run & helps in recovery if run is unsuccessful due to some unforeseen events.
7.Test Environment_Config settings: Test run settings. (application specific)
8.Func Library: Common functions and application dependent functions separately.
9:Recovery Files: .QRS or custom recovery functions.
10:Run Results: Application run results.
11:Help files: help files and framework documentations.
Following are my tweets so far (on framework development):
Automation framework rule #1:If it’s not simple, it won’t work! if it’s simple it’s fun to use.
Automation Framework rule #2:Achieving 100% automatic tests is an unreachable goal,never dream it.
Automation framework rule# 3:Make it easier to discover the errors that occur.
Automation Framework Rule #4:Focus on stability;the more stable the design, the lower the maintenance cost.
You must have realized as of now that framework is just a wrapper around complex internal architecture to have
a great drive with less interruption.Let turn on your radio coz you need not to know how it’s playing.Stakeholders
should play with our flexible framework just as we tune/play our radio.
For more interesting stuff on QTP :

Source: QTP Lab:- A touch of madness!