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Why Rational Robot?
If you are working through this tutorial, you probably already know what Rational Robot is. Following is the official description from the Rational Robot Users Guide:
Rational Robot is a complete set of components for automating the testing of Microsoft Windows client/server and Internet applications running under Windows NT 4.0, Windows XP, Windows 2000, Windows 98, and Windows Me.
The main component of Robot lets you start recording tests in as few as two mouse clicks. After recording, Robot plays back the tests in a fraction of the time it would take to repeat the actions manually.
Other components of Robot are:
- Rational Administrator -- Create and manage Rational projects to store your testing information.
- Rational TestManager -- Review and analyze test results.
- Object Properties, Text, Grid, and Image Comparators -- View and analyze the results of verification point playback.
- Rational SiteCheck -- Manage Internet and intranet Web sites.
It can be a little confusing. Both the record/playback engine component and the entire package have the same name -- Robot. In this tutorial, I will try to refer to the record/playback engine component as simply "Robot" and use the term "Robot Package" for the entire offering.
During the course of this tutorial, I will touch on almost all of these components, although you will concentrate most of your time on the main component of Rational Robot.
Rational Robot is an automated functional regression testing tool. Let's break that down a little...
Rational Robot is a functional testing tool
Functional testing is not concerned with how quickly or slowly the application does its job. That would be performance testing.
Functional testing is not directly concerned with how robust the application is. Functional testing doesn't really care if there are memory leaks unless, of course, the lack of a robust implementation means the user cannot use the application to do what it needs to do.
Functional testing is concerned with verifying an application operates as it was intended. There are various ways to gauge how well an application functions such as how well it conforms to specifications or requirements. In the simplest terms, you can ask "Does the application do what the user needs it to do?"
Rational Robot is a regression testing tool
A regression is when something that worked in one build of an application suddenly does not work in a subsequent build. Often, this occurs when there seemingly should be no connection between the change made in the new build and the existing functionality. Regression testing involves running a suite of functional tests against build after build of an application to verify everything that was working continues to work.
Rational Robot is an automated testing tool
Functional regression testing can be done through manual testing. The problem is, as a project evolves, that functional test suite becomes longer and longer. At some point, it can take more time to run the test suite manually than you actually have between builds!
When this happens, test teams are faced with tough choices. They have to find a way to decide which tests are "less critical" and can be omitted on some or all build tests. Now the door has been opened for regressions to slip into those untested capabilities of the application.
Rational Robot is an automated functional regression tool. This means you use a computer to execute the tests much faster than you could manually. The key to doing this is to have a way to capture interactions with an application and make those interactions available to be repeated later.
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