Rational Functional Tester

RationalFunctionalTester
Developer(s) Rational Software
Stable release 8.5.1 / Nov 2013
Development status Active
Operating system Microsoft Windows Linux
Type test automation tools
License Proprietary
Website www.ibm.com/software/awdtools/tester/functional/

Rational Functional Tester is a tool for automated testing of software applications from the Rational Software division of IBM. It allows users to create tests that mimic the actions and assessments of a human tester.[1] It is primarily used by Software Quality Assurance teams to perform automated regression testing.

Overview

Rational Functional Tester is a software test automation tool used by quality assurance teams to perform automated regression testing. Testers create scripts by using a test recorder which captures a user's actions against their application under test. The recording mechanism creates a test script from the actions. The test script is produced as either a Java or Visual Basic.net application, and with the release of version 8.1, is represented as series of screen shots that form a visual storyboard. Testers can edit the script using standard commands and syntax of these languages, or by acting against the screen shots in the storyboard.. Test scripts can then be executed by Rational Functional Tester to validate application functionality. Typically, test scripts are run in a batch mode where several scripts are grouped together and run unattended.

During the recording phase, the user may introduce verification points. Verification points capture an expected system state, such as a specific value in a field, or a given property of an object, such as enabled or disabled. During playback, any discrepancies between the baseline captured during recording and the actual result achieved during playback are noted in the Rational Functional Tester log. The tester can then review the log to determine if an actual software bug was discovered.

Key Technologies

Storyboard Testing

Introduced in version 8.1 of Rational Functional Tester, this technology enables testers to edit test scripts by acting against screen shots of the application. Prior to this feature, testers edited their.

Object

The Rational Functional Tester Object Map is the underlying technology used by Rational Functional Tester to find and act against the objects within an application. The Object Map is automatically created by the test recorder when tests are created and contains a list of properties used to identify objects during playback.

ScriptAssure

During playback, Rational Functional Tester uses the Object Map to find and act against the application interface. However, during development it is often the case that objects change between the time the script was recorded and when a script was executed. ScriptAssure technology enables Rational Functional Tester to ignore discrepancies between object definitions captured during recording and playback to ensure that test script execution runs uninterrupted. ScriptAssure sensitivity, which determines how big an object map discrepancy is acceptable, is set by the user.

Data Driven Testing

It is common for a single functional regression test to be executed multiple times with different data. To facilitate this, the test recorder can automatically parametrize data entry values, and store the data in a spreadsheet like data pool. This enables tester to add additional test data cases to the test data pool without having to modify any test code. This strategy increases test coverage and the value of a given functional test.

Domains supported

(list is made based on the information for v 8.5, see here)

Release history

The following is a release history of the product initially released as RobotJ, and today known as IBM Rational Functional Tester:

See also

References

  1. ↑ Software Test Engineering with IBM Rational Functional Tester. The Definitive Resource
  2. ↑ Rational Functional Tester Fix Pack 1 (8.2.2.1) for 8.2.2, August 2012
  3. ↑ Rational Functional Tester 8.3, November 2012
  4. ↑ Rational Functional Tester Fix Pack 1 (8.3.0.1) for 8.3, December 2012
  5. ↑ Rational Functional Tester 8.5, June 2013
  6. ↑ Rational Functional Tester Fix Pack 1 (8.5.0.1) for 8.5, August 2013
  7. ↑ Rational Functional Tester 8.5.1, November 2013
  8. ↑ Rational Functional Tester Fix Pack 1 (8.5.1.1) for 8.5.1, December 2013

External links