TestingGeek

In this article we will discuss Rational Functional Tester or RFT as it is known in software testing community. RFT is the next generation of functional testing automation tool from Rational. It was formerly called RobotJ and XDE Tester. RFT uses Java and VB.NET as its scripting languages. There is no separate IDE for RFT, for VB.Net it is integrated with Visual Studio and for Java it is integrated with Eclipse. This integration with well known IDEs  reduces your learning curve to a great extent if you are familiar with Visual Studio or Eclipse.

In this article, we will focus on the Java version of RFT which as everything else in Eclipse, is a Plug-in for Eclipse. As I mentioned earlier, this tool is developed as a Plug-in for Eclipse and can be installed in your existing Eclipse installation along with other applications. It supports Windows 2000, Windows XP and Windows 200 server for record and playback both. It supports only playback on Linux for Red Hat Linux 9.0, Red Hat Enterprise Linux 3.0 and SuSE Linux Professional 9.0. In terms of application support, it supports IBM/SUN JREs, various versions of Internet Explorer and Netscape, .NET framework and Win 32 components.

For readers not familiar with Eclipse, I will give a brief introduction to Eclipse and its terminology. According to official Eclipse website "Eclipse is an open source community whose projects are focused on building an open development platform comprised of extensible frameworks, tools and runtimes for building, deploying and managing software across the lifecycle." To familiarize you with RFT, I will explain the four commonly used terms in Eclipse.

• Workbench -
  The term Workbench refers to the desktop development environment. The workbench aims to achieve seamless integration and controlled openness by providing a common paradigm for the creation, management and navigation of workspace resources.
• Workspace -
  The central hub for user’s data file is called workspace. It contains resources like projects, files and folders. These resources are organized in the tree structure with project at the top. A special resource, the workspace root resource, serves as the root of resource tree. Workbench is the tool that allows user to navigate and manipulate workspace
• Perspective -
  A perspective defines the initial set and layout of views in the Workbench window. Each perspective provides a set of functionality aimed at accomplishing a specific type of task or work with specific type of  resources. Perspective controls what appear in certain menus and toolbars.
• Views -
  The central hub for user’s data file is called workspace. It contains resources like projects, files and folders. These resources are organized in the tree structure with project at the top. A special resource, the workspace root resource, serves as the root of resource tree. Workbench is the tool that allows user to navigate and manipulate workspace

In simple terms, Workbench is IDE, workspace is your project, perspective defines initial set of views and views provide alternative presentation and ways to navigate in the workbench.

When you have Rational Functional Tester installed in Eclipse, it becomes a perspective in the Eclipse. This perspective is called Functional Tester Perspective. Within this perspective, you can have Functional Tester menu, toolbar, project views, java editor, script explorer, console views and tasks view.

In order to get started with the RFT, you need to follow following steps:

• Project Creation
• Configuring Environment For Testing
• Configure Application For Testing

Before starting automation, you need to enable proper environment for testing. This environment tells RFT about how the application under test was developed and what type of object recognition method should be used. You can navigate to Configure -> Configure Environment For Testing to open configuration wizard. For example, if you are doing it for Java based application, you will specify information about the JRE, its location, any options that you need to give etc.

On the similar lines, you will need to configure your application for testing. You can find application configuration wizard in the Configure -> Configure application for testing. When you do that, you need to supply information like name of the application, type of application, its path, executable etc.

Before you do any automation in RFT, you need to make sure that these three steps are completed, i.e. Project is created to store the test assets, Test environment and Application is configured.

After you are done with these, you can proceed to the Recording. RFT gives you some flexibility in terms of how you want to record. For example, if you want to exclude some process from recording, want to specify delay in mouse/keyboard actions you can do so by changing the preferences at Windows -> Preferences. On the similar lines you have options for making changes in the playback options as well. During playback it offers more control in terms of providing options like delay before key up, delay for mouse hover etc.

• Select an object
• Perform an action
• Give variable name
• Specify verification point data

Within verification point data, you can specify what you want to test. For example, if its an object you can have verification point on its properties or if it is a menu you can have verification point for data in menu and so on..

Another important feature of RFT is object map. Understanding object map and how it works is very important in order to work effectively in RFT. Object Map is a static view that describes test objects known to functional tester in the application under test. In the other words, this is how RFT looks at the application under test. Every script in RFT is associated with a test object map file. This map file can be private or shared between scripts. Object map gives you functionality of creating new object maps, merging existing object maps, updating recognition property etc. Reorganization property plays a very important role in playback as this is how objects are identified uniquely. Every property for the object is assigned some weight and based on that RFT identifies unique object during playback. You can also use regular expression in recognition properties to make them more effective. If you are not familiar with the regular expression, RFT comes with a regular expression evaluator tool to help you identify regular expressions you need.

In brief, this article has given you information on how to get started with Rational Functional Tester. In the next part, we will cover datapool, script assure and integration of RFT with ClearCase. We will also explore options available in terms of execution results and limitation of RFT on Linux platform.