|
Sponsored Links
Resources
Enterprise Java
Research Library
Get Java white papers, product information, case studies and webcasts
|
News
News
News
|
Messages: 0
Messages: 0
Messages: 0
Printer friendly
Printer friendly
Printer friendly
Post reply
Post reply
Post reply
XML
XML
XML
|
 |
Java GUI Test Automation: Many Years of Squish Success at ARM
Introduction
ARM Ltd., is a well-established company that designs the technology that lies at the heart of many advanced digital products. ARM's product offering includes RISC microprocessors, graphics processors, enabling software, cell libraries, embedded memories, high-speed connectivity products, peripherals, and development tools.
We had the pleasure of discussing ARM's use of Squish with Dave Dextor, one of ARM's Staff Validation Engineers.
Why Squish?
ARM originally evaluated Squish several years ago, and bought their first licenses around 2005. We asked Dave what motivated ARM to choose Squish, and he told us:
The ease of use of Squish along with the object map which can be used to reduce the maintenance of tests were two key factors. And support of multiple operating systems and technologies—especially for Qt and Linux—was also very important.
Squish's unique object map makes it possible to identify application objects. When application objects change, the object map makes it possible for test engineers to make simple changes to the object map so that objects continue to be correctly identified by test scripts—without having to modify the tests themselves.
Dave also mentioned some of the other features that made Squish attractive to ARM, in particular the ease with which it is possible to do data driven testing, Squish's support for multiple standard scripting languages, and the fact that Squish has better features than competing tools.
Squish at ARM
ARM started out by using Squish for GUI testing of a proprietary debugger and an Eclipse-based IDE. The debugger was written using Qt and it was when looking for a suitable testing tool for this that ARM first came across Squish. They are now developing a new Eclipse-based debugger in Java and plan to use Squish to provide automated GUI testing for that tool.
The software that Squish is used to test runs on Windows and Linux (specifically, Windows XP, Windows Vista, and Red Hat Enterprise Linux 3 and 4).
Dave told us that one of the biggest challenges ARM had encountered when it came to creating and maintaining tests was keeping the tests current in the face of changes to the software across build cycles. Another challenge was to automate the testing process as much as possible based on the ARM cluster they use as a centralized server for development and testing.
At present, ARM make most use of Squish's command line tools to provide the maximum amount of test automation possible. Dave said that Squish had been particularly helpful in making testing cycles shorter, and also reducing the amount of human resources needed for testing.
Other than Squish, ARM support their testing process and test automation using in-house developed scripts (in Perl and Python), and proprietary debugger automation software. They also make extensive use of JUnit (a unit testing framework for Java) and CXXTest (a JUnit-like unit testing framework for C and C++).
Regarding froglogic's technical support, Dave told us:
It's been very helpful on the few occasions I've needed it.
Conclusion
ARM produce cross-platform tools based on Qt and Java technologies. Squish has enabled them to use the same testing tool chain on all the platforms they support and using both the GUI technologies they use—as well as giving their test engineers the freedom to use the scripting languages they prefer. ARM now have several years of experience using Squish, and Dave tells us that in future they plan to use Squish even more than they do now.
froglogic's team would like to thank Dave for taking the time to share ARM's experience with Squish, and we are looking forward to a continued successful relationship.
Visit www.froglogic.com to learn more about Squish.
|
|
|
| New content on TheServerSide.comNew content on TheServerSide.comNew content on TheServerSide.com |
|
|
Reza Rahman continues to explore the features of the proposed JSR 299, Contexts and Dependency Injection for Java EE (CDI). When approved, it promises to be a key feature of Java EE 6.
(January 21, Article)
Ted Neward is an independent consultant specializing in high-scale enterprise systems, and an authority in Java and .NET technologies. He is the author and co-author of several books, including Effective Enterprise Java. At TheServerSide Java Symposium in March, he will be presenting sessions on pragmatic architecture, ECMAScript and Scala.
(January 15, Article)
Now that Oracle is absorbing Sun Microsystems, there mixed views on what should come of the Java Community Process (JCP). While some say Oracle should become the new steward of Java and keep the JCP much as it was, others argue that it may be time to open-source this widespread language.
(November 24, Article)
Reza Rahman explores the features of the proposed JSR 299, Contexts and Dependency Injection for Java EE (CDI). When approved, it promises to be a key feature of Java EE 6.
(November 2, Article)
SAML is an XML-based standard for exchanging authentication and authorization data between security domains. The single most important problem that SAML was created to solve is the Web browser Single Sign-On problem. Many organizations are debating whether to stay with version 1.1 or move to 2.0. This article makes observations about both options.
(September 28, Article)
Joe Ottinger takes a look at how people learn, and applies it to the practice of programming. He notes that understanding how people learn is an essential part of working in a programming team.
(September 22, Article)
Stephen Maryka gave us an article about the Asynchronous Web and posed a number of questions that get examined like an approach to delivering Asynchronous Web capabilities through extensions to existing Java EE technologies.
(July 14, Article)
JavaServer Faces Flex goal is to provide users capability in creating standard Flex components, part of flexSDK which is open sourced through MPL license, as normal JSF components. This article by Ji Hoon Kim will provide an overview of creating a simple multilingual JSF page consisting of JSF Flex tags.
(June 29, Article)
In this session Jeff explores the key characteristics of successful SOA projects. He covers some of the patterns, and anti-patterns, tool sets, and strategies that he himself learned the hard way. Last, he provides a strategy and blueprint for achieving a high likelihood of success in your SOA project.
(June 23, Tech Talk)
Ari Zilka, CTO of Terracotta, Inc., talks about the new features in Terracotta 3.1, announced during JavaOne and available now.
(June 15, Tech Talk)
In this Tech Talk, Josh Long explores an integration challenge using Spring Integration and walks through the implementation, employing and expanding on the basic patterns of Enterprise Application Integration to tie together components into a function integration solution, and then demonstrates how Spring Integration helps address the integration requirements.
(June 15, Tech Talk)
In this Tech Talk, David Geary teaches you: The basics of Google Web Toolkit; How to implement Ajax-enabled applications in Java; Internationalization; Hooking into the browser history mechanism; Remote procedure calls.
(June 4, Tech Talk)
Jon Kern discusses the best architecture/technical solutions and ensure that they are repeated by all developers. By tackling the architecture up-front in a serial manner, subsequent parallel development will be much more manageable and predictable.
(May 28, Tech Talk)
This keynote describes the frustrations of modern knowledge workers in their quest to actually get some work done, and solutions for how to guard yourself against all those distractions. Neal Ford talks about environments, coding, acceleration, automation, and avoiding repetition as ways to defeat the misguided attempts to sap your ability to produce good work.
(May 26, Tech Talk)
Gil demonstrates how new, aggressive uses of already abundant compute capacity by common applications offer competitive value for application designers.
(May 21, Tech Talk)
Chris Keene introduces WaveMaker as a new way to automate the ability to generate Hibernate classes in order to more quickly bring OR mapping into an application.
(May 19, Article)
Mastering EJB was one of the original and most influential EJB books in the industry. Mastering EJB III now returns with two new expert co-authors, updated for EJB 2.1 and 30% new chapters including security, integration, best practices, open source, and more.
(Book PDF Download)
The Application Server Matrix is a detailed listing of J2EE vendors and their application server products, with information on latest version numbers, J2EE spec support and licensing, pricing, platform support, and links to product downloads and reviews.
(Application Server Comparison Matrix)
|
|
