[DUG] TestComplete (was RE: Automated builds)

[Paul Heinz]

Rohit asked: 

> I would love a demo of TestComplete in action.  I have 
> dithered over it for years and am still not sure if it will 
> work for us.

Well, firstly, it's not me (or the other Delphi developers) using it so
much as our in-house tester. Who we do see as part of the development
team BTW i.e. No adversarial testing vs. development culture wanted here
please!

And he's kind of busy right now (along the rest of the team) building
our Foreign Currency enabled edition - which entails lots of regression
as well as new feature testing. So that's keeping him and the contract
testers we bring in for this kind of release, working hard to find all
the bugs us developers are creating. Just kidding, of course, as our
software is bug free when it leaves the developers keyboard :-)

Secondly, we use it in a somewhat 'different' way than most since we
have our own internal scripting language already (i.e. MaxBasic) and all
our automation-enabled business objects, which we needed to surface into
TestComplete (and we have). 

So Simon (our tester) uses it in an evolving and hybrid kind of way. And
I expect it will get more hybrid once we can allot him some more
developer time to write code and components for him to support better,
deeper, and wider testing. My goal is to add the criteria of improved
testability as an top-level design consideration, as equally important
as feature conformance (i.e. to user expectation) and meeting desired
performance targets. So that means Simon gets an allocation of developer
time to improve whatever he sees will help him test easier and better.
That whole 'smarter, not harder' thing we all try for.

So in summary, I don't think a demo of how we specifically use
TestComplete would be all that useful. But if it can handle the somewhat
'unusual' product and development direction we've taken (and it does),
surely it can handle anything :-)

As an aside, Simon has also used other more expensive testing products
at previous employers and going with TestComplete was his call, not
mine. I had already purchased the license, back when it was called
AQTest, I had just never got around to investing enough time to really
deploy it. Simon rates TestComplete very high for both bang-for-buck and
for extensibility. YMMV.

TTFN,
  Paul.

Paul Heinz | Accredo Business Software Ltd
34 Burleigh St | PO Box 99156 | Auckland, NZ
P: +64 9 373 5963 | F: +64 9 373 5961
M: 021 456 231 | www.accredo.co.nz