HP Extensibility Accelerator

The rapid adoption of Rich Internet Application (RIA) technologies and Web 2.0 innovations has significant implications for both web users and the teams involved in the functional testing of web-enabled applications. The advent of Web 2.0 applications has created unprecedented challenges for organizations that focus on automated functional testing.  Web 2.0 enabled applications can leverage various technologies on the client side and through web browsers. With Web 2.0, the client side of the application processes more scripted code and rich presentation frameworks than in traditional environments. This shift of processing to the client side challenges the capabilities of all toolsets designed for the functional testing of Web-Enabled Applications.

Testing challenges in Web 2.0:

Some of the typical challenges faced were as follows:

• Web pages are dynamic and asynchronous.
• Portions of web pages can now be refreshed automatically to give users updates on sports scores, stock quotes, etc.
• Current activities of people they connect with via social networking sites
• Users have more control than ever before. Via sites such as iGoogle, users can now create their own home pages that bring together information and content from across the web like, local weather forecasts, headlines from prominent news outlets, and videos from YouTube etc.
• Client side of the application processes more scripted code and rich presentation frameworks than in traditional environments

Why HP Extensibility Accelerator?

HP thought of putting forth advanced tools to test Web 2.0 technologies with HP Functional Testing. As a result, HP came up with a new accelerator for functional testing to overcome those challenges. The Extensibility Accelerator for HP Functional Testing provides a Visual Studio-like IDE that accelerates and facilitates the design, development and deployment of HP QuickTest Professional Add-in Extensibility support sets.

These support sets extend the HP Functional Testing Web Add-in so you can test Web controls that are not supported out-of-the-box.

Evolution of HP Extensibility Accelerator:

Extensibility is enhanced and accelerated with the new HP Extensibility Accelerator for Functional Testing software, which provides an environment that speeds the development of Web Add-in Extensibility toolkit.

What is HP Extensibility Accelerator?

HP Extensibility Accelerator for Functional Testing is a separate utility that can be used on a machine with or without an installed copy of HP Functional Testing.

It provides a user interface and special tools that help us define new test object classes, map those test object classes to the controls in our application, and teach QTP how to identify the controls, perform operations on the controls and retrieve their properties.

Features of HP Extensibility Accelerator:

• Creating and defining the test object classes using JavaScript functions for the custom controls.
• HP Extensibility Accelerator provides JavaScript editing capabilities and debugging tools to facilitate the writing of these functions.
• Maps the test object class to your control and application, and it automatically identifies the rules that will teach HP QuickTest Professional how to recognize the test object class in your application.
• The HP Extensibility Accelerator IDE simplifies the process of creating and editing the test object/toolkit configuration XML files.
• The HP Extensibility Accelerator deployment capabilities enable you to automatically deploy your new toolkit support set to HP QuickTest Professional or to package it so you can share it with other HP QuickTest Professional users

Conclusion:

With the HP Extensibility Accelerator for Functional Testing, we’re making it easy for our users and partners to create their own extensibility assets and extend our software to support web controls that are not supported out of the box. With the hundreds of Ajax toolkits in use today and new ones coming out each month, the HP Extensibility Accelerator provides an extremely important set of tools for your organization.

The software itself can be installed and used on a machine that does not have HP QuickTest Professional on it. Custom toolkits developed with the software can then be deployed on one or more systems that are running HP QuickTest Professional.