Review: Be More Rational About Testing
For the past year, Big Blue has been sharpening testing technologies in its Rational lineup. The ClearQuest bug tracking product, for instance, now comes with test management features, which allows IBM's Rational Functional Tester Web testing tool to submit defects right into ClearQuest.
Rational Functional Tester has been beefed up as well. Functional Tester can be integrated into the Eclipse platform 3.2 as an additional feature. And if testers don't have it installed, Functional Tester can automate the installation of Eclipse from the Eclipse Web site.
Functional Tester also is being offered in Microsoft's Visual Studio.Net as an add-in. Functional Tester uses full-blown Java for scripting, but in the Visual Studio edition, the IBM Rational tool uses Visual Basic.Net for that purpose. Both Java and Visual Basic.Net are fully integrated, so the syntax is the same as those used by Sun Microsystems and Microsoft compilers.
Like most Web testing tools on the market, Functional Tester uses a recorder wizard to capture user interaction. It arrives with two sample classic Java applications learn the product. The second application comes with multiple versions, so users can learn how to perform regression testing. By recording the first version and playing it back against the second version, testers can indentify new bugs.
Typically, the tool runs through a manual testing process and records the activities of testers. While in progress, testers can add verification points along the way to validate data values using thresholds. In addition, testers can verify data values by examining properties on objects and can extract values from objects. After producing an automated test, testers can use it repeatedly against future releases of the application.
Functional Tester can abstract all the links between the scripts and applications, which allows scripts to run independent of application location. By changing links in configuration files, testers can easily point to any application version running at other locations. The scripts also can be ported across platforms, enabling developers to test applications on Windows and thenpass them to test teams on Linux.
Functional Test costs $4,240, including 12 months of software maintenace. A number of versions ago, IBM added the ability to perform data-driven testing on Functional Tester. That feature allows developers to run many tests without recreating scripts. However, the data-driven features are limited, and it's recommended to buy Rational's Test Manager so testers can create complex test sequences using regular expressions.