Let's talk about software testing!

[KateAQA]

Hello everybody!

My name is Kate.  I’m the new community specialist for AutomatedQA.
I’m here in the forums to learn as much as I can about automated software testing, but even more, I'm here to listen to you and learn about what all this means to you. 
My AQA co-workers are great professionals!  And it's very important for us to hear your opinion on everything in the automated testing process.

First of all I'd like to know have you ever heard about such tool for software quality automated testing as TestComplete?
Has anyone of you ever tried it?
I'm ready to answer your questions and to listen to your ideas!

Kind regards,
Kate - AQA

[tinjaw]

Kate,

Welcome to the forum. First off all, kudos for not being a coward and stating up front that you have a corporate affiliation. There is nothing wrong with that. IMNSHO, think it is a good thing, and several of my good buddies hold "evangelist" positions at large software companies. Corporate participation in forums is no different then showing up at user groups used to be years ago. But enough on that tangent. 

Let me combine my greed need for all testing software, my past experience as a QA engineer, and my desire to do another review for DonationCoder.

If you provide me with your company's software, I will use it to test the software I am building for my new indie game company. I will make postings here on DonationCoder in the Developer's Corner on how things are going and how I am using your product to test my software. I think this will provide DonationCoder members with a good idea of what testing actually requires. I have wanted to produce some screencasts for beginning developers here at DonationCoder (and ShowMeDo), and maybe this will be the impetus I need to get that project started. I am also an experienced beta tester and am always willing to provide accurate and complete bug reports and enhancement requests for upcoming releases.

Oh, and while I am at it, cthorpe is always looking for software vendors to participate in the DonationCoder discount program.  [added] It is often difficult to find tools for the indie game company budget, but we need to test, document, etc. just the same as "the big guys" if we want our software to sell well in the market.

[Renegade]

Hmmm... Interesting...

I just gave a developer a set of cases to test a couple weeks ago... Well into the tens of thousands of cases... He won't even look at them for a while - with good reason.

Unfortunately I can't say much more. The numbers themselves should speak volumes though.

What platforms/languages does it work with?

I keep thinking nunit for some reason - any similarities?

[mouser]

Kate,

I've not used TestComplete but I have used AQtime, the profiling and leak detection tool created by your company and was very impressed -- it's a great program.

AutomatedQA Website: http://www.automatedqa.com/

To talk a little about automated software testing.. I include some minimal automated testing support in my C++ debug library (JrDebugLogger), but it is decidely minimalistic and nothing like the serious testing tool that TestComplete is.

So I'm not sure that i really fit into your target audience, but just to advocate on behalf of coders like me who are interested in automated testing but do not want to be forced into a cumbersome test setup and scaffolding system, let me just summarize a few bullet points about what i'm interested in a testing systen:

Don't force me to do a ton of work and learn a complicated system for how to build weird test functions that is going to discourage me from adding testing to my programs.  Let me write test functions the way i write my code and you add support code so that i can tell you how to call my test functions.  Another way to say this is: Let me write test functions in a way that suits my style, and have ways i can tell your software about these test functions.

• Make it easy for me to toggle compiling of the test code into my build so that it's dead easy to keep the test code as part of my main program codebase, but easily build release versions that don't compile the code in it.
• Include nice support for timing information in testing -- usually timing/speed are considered the job of a profiler/optimizer, but i'd like to see some minimal speed/timing reports inside a test tool for convenience.
• Try to move as much test configuration information from outside a project file into the code, which can be auto discovered by the test tool.  This is a slightly unusual request, but basically what i'm saying is that i'd rather not have to spent a lot of time creating project files and having me tell the program about all the testing functions and how they can be called -- the test program should be able to autodetect most of that information by parsing the source files.
• Cross platform non-interference -- it's fine with me if the testing tool only works on windows, as long as you don't require me to add anything to my code files that would upset a compiler on a non-windows platform.
• I know AQA always makes nice looking programs with good gui's and pretty reports, so i won't go into that stuff -- so i'll just again reiterate my desire to make it really easy to just jump into the test system and run a quick test, rather than have to spend a lot of time configuring test "suites" and going through a long laborious process before i can even run a test.  Eventually on big projects you will of course what to be able to define one or more test suites and all the kinds of involved stuff that i know AQTest will do -- but i'd just encourage an easier faster way to jump in to doing testing in the begining.

[KateAQA]

Thank you guys for your interest to my topic! 
As for me I learn so much new looking through this forum! 

Renegade,
>> What platforms/languages does it work with?

I can give you the following information: As for platforms TestComplete is working with the Windows family of operating systems (including Windows Vista).
I’d like to ask you what do you mean by languages? Is it scripting or spoken language?   
So that is what I can tell you:
development tools: any windows application, superior support for most popular compilers (any .NET compiler (both Microsoft and non-Microsoft compilers), Java applications, Visual C++, Visual Basic, Delphi, C++Builder.
scripting languages: VBScript, Jscript, DelphiScript (similar to Pascal), C++Script, C#Script. So, you don’t have to learn a new language.
spoken languages: UI is in English. TC supports Unicode, so you can use it to test any application: Japan, Chinese, Russian, German, etc.

>> I keep thinking nunit for some reason - any similarities?

As far as I know, NUnit is a tool intended for unit testing of .NET applications. TC supports unit testing (and many other types of testing). It contains special supports for NUnit, MSTest, JUnit and DUnit tests. That is, you can call these tests as part of your TestComplete test. Also, TC has access to internal methods and properties of .NET applications. This feature let you call test objects’ methods of your .NET application directly from TC scripts. And these test objects may be an ordinary objects, that is, there is no need they support specific NUnit interfaces.

Best regards,
Kate AQA

[KateAQA]

Hi TinJaw,

I'll ask about getting software for you, but I’m not sure if TestComplete may be the best choice for testing game software.
There's no doubt you should try it and make your own conclusion!

Just keep in touch!

Kind regards,
Kate AQA