Self-healing scripts for GUI applications
TestGUI from Original Software offers browser scripts that can update themselves and analyses objects and components in Lotus Notes, Microsoft Access, Adobe PDFs and more
January, 26, 2004 – Original Software, creators of some of the world’s most widely-used and innovative software testing solutions, have announced their latest major technological breakthrough in the software testing arena – Self-Healing script technology for GUI applications. This new technology means that, for the first time, existing scripts for business-critical GUI applications can be run over updated versions of an application, correcting themselves as they go – and avoiding the need for tedious and time-consuming script maintenance.
‘Code-free’ testing
Development of core GUI applications is continually driven by the pressure to deliver business advantage and improve productivity at the earliest opportunity, and with fewer resources. This means that the testing of these critical applications is frequently reduced to no more than superficial end-user testing, instead of the detailed and aggressive functional testing that is actually required. This puts system quality, stability and sometimes security at great risk of failure.
TestGUI with Self-Healing scripts is designed to make such detailed and aggressive testing much more accessible with the resources a company has available. It is founded upon a ‘code-free’ approach to testing that eliminates the need to use a scripting language, but without compromising on the power and the level of penetration of the testing. This enables companies to make their core applications more robust than ever. But Self-Healing scripts takes this accessibility to a new level.
Self-Healing scripts
As GUI applications are so prone to ongoing changes and updates, manual maintenance of GUI scripts is probably the biggest pain facing testers. It is tedious, time-consuming, unproductive, and a primary reason why most test projects – and test tools – ultimately fail. Self-healing scripts in version 4.0 of TestGUI automates the process of script updating, through the use of an algorithm that can spot elements on a screen or in a script that have been added or removed – including entire screens. The user can then have these changes automatically incorporated into an updated version of the script, or choose to intervene in the updating and overwriting process according to preset criteria. Elements that have been moved on a screen are simply remapped to their new location (as long as their properties have not substantially changed).
Colin Armitage, CEO of Original Software, says: “Self-healing scripts have been available in some of our other testing products for some time now. To make this technology available in TestGUI has been a prime objective and is extremely valuable addition to GUI testing capability. We can already state with pride that TestGUI can test just about any GUI application ‘out-of-the-box’. Self-healing script technology directly addresses the biggest question posed by clients to testing tools vendors – how does your solution cope when our application changes? And of course, all this has been made available without users having to resort to using a scripting language.”
Support for Lotus Notes, Microsoft Access, Adobe PDFs and more
Along with Self-Healing Scripts, another significant development in TestGUI 4.0 is the ability to interrogate windowless applications such as Lotus Notes, Microsoft Access, Adobe PDFs etc. This is because TestGUI can automatically analyse components in any application that has implemented Microsoft Active Accessibility Standard.
TestGUI can also support: all standard Microsoft Visual Basic and C++ objects and controls; Seagull J Walk GUI panels; Cool:Plex objects and controls; Borland Delphi standard objects and controls; Microsoft .NET controls; Videosoft Flexgrid controls. Furthermore, TestGUI 4.0 enables users of the above languages to define their own customised object classes, to ensure that these are also captured and analysed.
TestGUI is also compatible with IBM DB2, Microsoft SQL Server, Oracle and Access databases. This enables central storage of test scripts, data documentation and results on these platforms, making testing resources much more widely available.
TestGUI version 4.0 with Self-Healing Scripts is available immediately from Original Software, with pricing calculated on a per-concurrent-user basis.
