***** Here is the first article in this QTP training series Introduction to QuickTest Professional (QTP)

Introduction to QuickTest Professional (QTP)

What is QTP? HPs Quick Test Professional (QTP) is a software that facilitates Automation Testing for software applications Functional and Regression testing to be more specific. QTP comes with a user interface that can be considered an Integrated Development environment (IDE) for the test itself. The IDE has various features that aid the tester to develop a comprehensive script which would successfully validate the purpose of the test. All these features will be discussed in detail as we proceed through the series of these articles. Some of the important aspects of QTP: 1. It uses VB Script as its scripting language. (A scripting language is one that gets interpreted at run time) 2. QTP runs only in a windows environment. 3. The current version of QTP is 11.0 (Latest version Unified Functional Testing UFT 11.5) 4. The technologies it supports are Web, Java .Net, SAP, Oracle, Siebel, PeopleSoft, Web Services, and many major languages. Although some of the older versions dont support all the technologies listed. How does it work?

The basic test creation method is record and playback. What does this really mean? Let s talk about Record first. When a tester launches QTP and performs a series of operations on the AUT (Application under test) QTP generates lines of code that corresponds to each operation performed. This will be the basic test script. Moving on to Playback. When the test script created is run, it performs the exact same operations on the AUT thus playing back the sequence of steps already recorded. E.g.: When I launch QTP and try to access the login page of a web based email program, I enter the login ID, Password and press the OK button. These actions are recorded in their equivalent VBScript lines of code in the QTP IDE. When I save this test script and play it back, QTP will enter the same login ID, Password I entered before and clicks on the OK button for me. Now this being the gist of the basic test creation technique, record and playback are not always sufficient to a robust test script. The tester will have to use the other features in the IDE in conjunction with a little bit of his programming skills to achieve the required results. There are various technical aspects to be taken into consideration before we attempt to record and playback, like the state of the AUT, synchronization, the exact menu options, the exact

code that QTP generates etc. We will get to that as soon as we discuss the basic concepts of the tool itself. Heres how all this works. QTP identifies the various objects in the AUT by a name or handler ID or any other unique property/properties that the object possesses. During the record phase it captures all these properties and during playback, it performs the desired operations like mouse click, checkbox checking etc. on these objects.

What will you need to get started with QTP?

A valid QTP license or in the case of a learner a trial version on their computer. QTP Download: Here is a link to download the QTP trial version: Download QTP. In the above link, go to the Trials and Demos tab and select the HP QTP Essentials 11.0 English Evaluation (web GUI Testing only) option. You can also select the latest version HP Unified Functional Testing 11.50 CC English SW E-Media Evaluation. Let us know if you want more detailed instructions on downloading and installing QTP trial version on your machine. There are two kinds of licenses Seat license and concurrent/floating license. Seat license is for a single machine at one time whereas a current license is for a particular number of concurrent users. Now that we have some background information about QTP, lets examine the tool itself starting with the UI. QTP GUI: When a test is recorded or created it can be viewed in one of these two views: 1. Keyword view: This view is a tabular representation of all the objects and the actions that are performed on them. Every row in the table is a step performed on the AUT and can be modified. Some of the most common columns displayed are: item, operation, value and documentation. 2. Expert view: As the name indicates, this view is for more technical users who would want to tweak the source code as per their requirements. Both the views are available simultaneously so the user can switch between them anytime during the test creation or modification. Lets record a little something to get started Step #1): Launch QTP. The first thing that comes up is an Add-in manager. It displays all the add-ins that are available and the user can check or uncheck the ones as needed. Active-X, Web and Visual Basic are available by default. (This feature can be turned off if required).

Step #2) On Clicking OK in the Add-in Manager QTP start page comes up. (click to image to enlarge)

Step #3) On choosing Record option (F3 key) the Record and Run settings screen comes up with Web and Windows Application Tabs. Click OK without changing any settings. However, all the features of this screen will be discussed at length later on.

Step #4) For our example, I am going to launch the Flight application from the samples that come with QTP. I am going to enter the Agent Name and Password in the Login screen. Now, lets examine the code it generates. The following is the keyword view. As you can see, the actions are in the form of a table with columns: Item, Operation, Value and Documentation. Item corresponds to the object in the AUT on which we performed an action, operation is the action itself, value is the data we set the particular object to and documentation is more or less like a description. (click on image to enlarge)

The corresponding keyword view to the same test is as follows. As you can see this view contains the source code for all the actions performed.

Step #5) The code can be manipulated from either of these views.

Conclusion:
Here is a gist of everything we discussed in this article: QTP is a software that aids automated Functional and Regression testing of software applications. The current version runs only in a windows environment and uses VB script as a scripting language. The basic method for creation of a test is Record and Play back, although thats not always sufficient. It comes with two kinds of licenses, seat and concurrent. The default add-ins are Active X, Web and Visual Basic. A test can be recorded on a Web or Windows application; the specific details are to be provided in the record and run settings pop-up window. The GUI provides two views, Keyword and Expert. Keyword view is a tabular form that shows details like the name of the objects, its value, and the operation performed etc. Expert view displays the performed actions on the AUT in the form of source code.

Additional operations to be performed on the test objects can be added or deleted either from the Keyword view or programmatically from the Expert view. More details on this in the next article.