What is script assure technology in IBM rational functional tester?

Script assure technology is another key technology used by the IBM’s rational functional tester which is an automated tool developed for functional testing by the IBM’s rational software division. 

- Rational functional tester is usually employed by quality assurance people in order to carry out the regression testing. 

- The test scripts are created with the help of a sophisticated test recorder which includes capturing the actions of the users against the AUT or application under test. 

- From these captured actions, a test script is created by the recording mechanism which is based on .net or java applications. 

- When the version 8.1 of the rational functional tester was released, the scripts started to be represented as a series of the screen shots from a story board that is of a visual nature. 

- The created script is further enhanced using the syntax and standard commands of the language.

- These scripts are then run for the validation of the software system’s or application’s functionality. 

- To say the test scripts are executed in the batch mode so that the test scripts can be grouped together and executed unattended. 

- During the phase of recording, the verification points are introduced by the user for capturing the system with its expected state. 

- Any information regarding the bugs is stored in the logs of the rational functional tester. 

- While the play back process is in progress, an object map is used by the rational functional tester for finding and acting against the interface of the application. 

- However, it is possible that during the development phase the objects might be changed between the time that was taken for the recording of the script and for executing the script. 

- The script assure technology allows the rational functional tester to ignore the discrepancies between the definitions of the objects that were captured during the recording as well as the playback in order to ensure that there is an interrupted execution of the test scripts. 

- This is a factor called the script assure sensitivity which determines the size of the object map discrepancy that is acceptable and this factor can be set by the user. 

- It has been found that developing automated scripts for carrying out the regression testing of the dynamic content of the web pages such as GUI applications is difficult for the testers who are used to IBM rational functional tester.

- Testers tend to develop scripts that are quite re-silient and can be used for testing the values of the dynamic object properties which are not known to have sufficient unique properties even though having sufficient properties lead to problems in the recognition and thus leading to several failures and errors. 

If you understand properly that how the IBM rational functional tester works, its advantages, and how the objects can be recognized during the run time, you can very well develop the scripts that can be used to cope up with the changes and provide results of the regression testing that are informative enough. 

Many of the testers who are freshly introduced to the rational functional tester find the difficulties in the creation of the resilient scripts while simultaneously automating the web based applications. 

With the help of the script assure technology, the scripts can be subjected to play back in the rational functional tester by using the script assure feature which will also help in controlling the object matching sensitivity. 

Object matching sensitivity is a function that relies on a number of factors for the recognition of the objects present in that application. It is important that the properties that were recorded in the object map must match with the object properties so that the properties could be recognized by the rational functional tester.

It is by default that the rational functional tester might recognize an object even if some properties do not match. If a match is not found between the two properties, the object in the application cannot be recognized by the rational functional tester.