Keyword Driven Automation : QTP

Analyzing Your Application

In this step, you analyze your application to determine your testing needs. This step is divided into multiple tasks:

Determine the development environments that QuickTest needs to support. From the perspective of QuickTest, your application comprises windows containing a hierarchy of objects that were created in one or more development environments. QuickTest provides support for these environments using add-ins.
You load QuickTest add-ins when QuickTest opens by using the Add-in Manager dialog box. You can check which add-ins are loaded by choosing Help > About QuickTest Professional. For more information, see the HP QuickTest Professional Add-ins Guide.
Prepare the information that QuickTest needs to identify objects in your application and to (optionally) open your application at the beginning of a run session. You need to know the URL, the executable file name and path, or other command-line information. Later, you will enter this in Record and Run Settings dialog box. For more information, see the sections describing the Record and Run options for your testing environment in the HP QuickTest Professional Add-ins Guide.
Analyze the various business processes that customers perform while using your application to determine the actions you need to create. You create an action for each sub-process, or task, a customer might perform.
Navigate through your application from a customer's perspective and perform the tasks that customers might perform. Each process you perform in your application will be represented as a test in QuickTest. You can create your tests now, or you can wait until you are ready to add steps to your tests
As you perform a process, try to compartmentalize or "chunk" it into modular units.

Example

An application that enables users to purchase items online might contain various business processes, including registering on the site and purchasing items. Each process may require one or more tasks—you create actions based on these tasks. For example, registering on the site may be a simple process requiring only one action, whereas purchasing items may be more complex, requiring several actions, such as a Login action, a Browse action, an AddToCart action, a PurchaseItems action, and a Logout action.

By creating separate reusable actions for each task, you can include calls to the same actions from multiple tests. For example, you may want to include a Login action in many of your tests.

You can create empty actions now to set up a skeleton infrastructure for your tests, or you can create them when you are ready to add steps to your actions. For more information, see Working with Actions.

You may also want to create a single test storing all actions relevant for an application. Then all other tests can call the actions stored in this central repository. This helps with test structure and maintenance.

Tip: As you plan your tests and actions, keep in mind that short tests and actions that check specific functions of the application or complete a transaction are better than long ones that perform several tasks.