Automatic Functional Testing for Mac and Linux?

testYourGUIS asks: "I work with a company that tests consumer and business software for various venues. One of the programs we rely on heavily is called Rational Visual Test, which is a VB-like compiled programming language that works directly with Windows API to simulate mouse clicks, text entry, menu pulldowns, and so on. We use them to stress-test various applications, collect the results, and then send the vendors a spreadsheet showing what we found. Recently, pressure has started to produce the same results on Mac OS X and possibly Linux applications. I was wondering if anyone knew of such software that works on Mac OS X, and how to go about doing this for Linux?"

"For example, a vendor has a database interface, and wants to know how many times we can access a series of records, what the results show (are the right, blank, time out?), and how long it took for the search to take place during various times of the day, and so on. So we emulate one of their data entry people by logging onto the system, putting in some search parameter from a script, and then record what the text (or error message) was when it came back. Yes, we could connect directly to the SQL database without their front end, but it's the combination of their front end and the database we usually test. We have found many examples where were can connect raw, for instance, but the front end displays a timeout. We also test things like 'What happens if the user enters a colon or asterisk?' or 'What if the text entered in the box is over 256k?' Then we tell the vendor the results, and they hopefully fix them based on the data we gave them."

Couldn't you use PERL? to do a lot?

[Soggy_Cornflake]

I've worked with Rational Visual Test(or Irrational Test as we often refer to it.) With both you can call commands from different programs. I have't tried doing similar tasks in PERL, but mostly because I have not immersed myself in PERL.

Java... sort of

[d3xt3r]

Are these applications you need to demo like this, Java Swing apps? If so, you can use built-in javax APIs to do this. You could simulate user actions this way, mouse movements, etc as a "demo" mode for the user.

Obviously this would work on Linux, OS X, and Windows as well.

Hope this helps.

Automatic Functional Testing for Mac and Linux?

[jay_in_pa]

You might be able to use Rational Visual Test with a windows based X-server to control Linux (or any Unix) apps.

Re:Here's a good automatic functional test

[dkh2]

"The more functional an OS, the more desktops it has."

Yeah, right. That paraphases exactly why we've used VHS for 20+ years instead of Beta. NOT! It is arguable that the Apple was a superior computing platform to the IBM PC of its day. The IBM-PC had the full corporate power and marketing strength of, well, IBM behind it while the Apple had the comparatively limited resources of two guys named Steve.

For the uninformed... Back in the days when the VCR was just being released on the world there were two competing formats, JVC's VHS format (which we all know) and Sony's Beta (a.k.a BetaMax). The latter was far superior but, alas, was first out marketed (a bit of history [urbanlegends.com]), then out litigated (Read case story [hrrc.org]). To date the majority of video production houses still use Beta because of it's superior image and audio quality.