• 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.

Next Page