What is object map technology in IBM rational functional tester work?

IBM rational functional tester was developed in the league of automated functional testing tools which could assist the users in the creation of the tests that could mimic the assessments as well as the actions of the human testers. However, till date the rational function tester has found its primary use in the field of software quality assurance for performing the automated regression testing. 

About Rational Functional Tester

- This functional testing tool is used in the process of quality assurance for carrying out the regression testing. 

- The test scripts are created with the help of a test recorder whose function is to capture the actions of users against the AUT or application under testing. 

- This recording mechanism assists in the creation of the test scripts from the actions. 

- The test scripts that are produced using the rational functional tester are either based up on visual basic. NET application or a java application. 

- Eventually, the test scripts came to be represented as a series of screen shots with the release of the version 8.1 of the rational functional tester and formed a visual story board. 

- Using the standard commands as well as the syntax of these languages, they could be edited by the testers. 

- This could also be done by carrying out an act against the screen shots available in the story board. 

- Then the test scripts are ready to be executed by the rational functional tester in order to validate the functionality of the application.

- Usually, the test scripts are executed in the batch mode where there several test scripts have been grouped together and have been executed unattended. 

- The user needs to introduce several verification points while the recording phase is in progress. 

Verification points are introduced so that the expected state of the system can be captured such as the following:

1. A specific value in a particular field.
2. A given property of an object whether enabled or disabled.

- A baseline is captured during recording which is compared with the actual result and if any discrepancy is found between the two, it is noted down by the rational functional tester in its logs. 

- The log then can be reviewed by the tester in order to determine whether the actual software bug or error has been discovered or not.  

What is Object Mapping Technology?

- Object mapping technology or OMT is counted among the key technologies of the rational functional tester. 

- This is actually an underlying technology whose purpose is to find objects within a software system or application and act against them. 

- The test recorder creates automatically the object map by itself whenever some tests are created containing a list of properties that can be used for the identification of the objects during the play back progress. 

- For the rational functional tester to interact with a particular object in a software system or application it should be able to understand the interface of that object. 

- This usually does not pose any problem for the standard objects such as list boxes, buttons and edit fields etc.

- But, in some cases it does pose problems when the application developers try to create their own customs objects in order to meet a certain requirement of the software system or application. 

- Application developers can overcome this problem by creating an object proxy using which they can identify the interfaces to a custom objects in the code. 

- This mechanism is termed as the SDK or software development kit interface. 

- Using it, the users can develop programs in .net or java in order to add the functional testing support for .Net as well as java custom controls.