Automated Testing and Profiling Cycles
The AutomatedQA product line helps companies significantly improve their software development and quality assurance processes:
TestComplete is an
automated testing tool for systematic unit, functional and regression testing of software products. It helps companies ensure that their products meet the highest quality standards.
By using some or all of these tools together you can go beyond simple “building”, “profiling” or “testing”. For instance, when you integrate AQtime with TestComplete, you can debug and tune your applications using test automation, thereby reducing the amount of time spent on manual testing and data analysis. By using AQtime, TestComplete and Automated Build Studio together, you are well on your way to eliminating the most tedious aspects of the development processes — from automating your software builds to running your regression test batteries and tuning the application for optimum efficiency and speed.
Integrating AQtime and TestComplete
Both AQtime and TestComplete are intended to help you improve your application’s quality. However, they do this in different ways:
TestComplete, as an automated testing tool, records what each part of an application does for other parts, and what the entire application does for the user. Testing gives you an answer to the question: Does my application function as expected?
AQtime, as a profiler, traces how the application does what it does. AQtime automatically tracks and accurately measures performance and memory use during the application's execution, and then displays the results in a comparative format.
Since TestComplete can fully drive the application under test, you can use TestComplete tests to simulate user actions over the application that is being profiled by AQtime. Using TestComplete frees you from performing the test actions (opening and filling forms, selecting menu commands and much more) manually.
You can start an AQtime profiler over the application under test directly from TestComplete’s tests or user interface, and thus use profiling as part of the testing process. At the end of the test run, you get two result sets: the profiling results in AQtime and the automated test results in TestComplete.
TestComplete, in its turn, includes utility objects that let you start AQtime profilers, control the profiling run and generate the profiling results directly from automated tests, provided that AQtime is installed on the TestComplete computer. For instance, you can use AQtime’s Coverage profiler to determine which parts of your application’s source code were covered by automated tests; or use the Allocation and Resource profilers to ensure that your application releases all allocated objects and memory blocks after it is terminated. After the test run finishes, you will also have two result sets: one in TestComplete and another one in AQtime, the latter being linked into the TestComplete results:
If test results in TestComplete indicate a bug or an issue in the application under test, you can submit these results to an issue-tracking database like Team Foundation or Bugzilla directly from TestComplete, so that developers will be able to examine the problem carefully and fix it.
Another benefit of the AQtime and TestComplete integration is that AQtime can profile TestComplete automated test scripts written in VBScript, JScript, C#Script and C++Script while they are running, so that you can measure the productivity and efficiency of your automated test scripts.
Integration of AQtime and TestComplete with Automated Build Studio
Though integration of profiling and testing lets you save time and often energy, these are not the only benefits of using AutomatedQA products. Both AQtime and TestComplete are integrated with Automated Build Studio, AutomatedQA’s build and release management system. Via Automated Build Studio, you can not only build your application, but also quickly profile it with AQtime and test it with TestComplete at desired intervals as well as at arbitrary moments.
For example, you can start profiling your application in AQtime and then, instead of navigating to the application manually, have TestComplete do this for you. A more sophisticated example: at the end of a workday, Automated Build Studio can automatically build your project, run it through AQtime’s profilers then execute your automated test batteries via TestComplete and log all results to an issue-tracking system. This can all be done without writing a single line of code! All of the information needed to profile or test your project — project name, profiler name, name of the file to save results to, etc. — are specified using Automated Build Studio’s advanced visual macro builder:
Automated Build Studio is all about optimizing workflows and processes. By automating routine and tedious tasks such as nightly builds, regression test batteries, and performance profiling, it allows you to focus on more important issues.
The integration of AutomatedQA’s tools has been engineered to give you a cohesive way to test your applications from inception to delivery. Use them together with Automated Build Studio, and you’ll be able to fully automate your organization’s build/profile/test/deploy and continuous integration processes.