What is Object Spy? How to Use it?

Object spy is one of the most important tools in winrunner as well as in quick test professional. In this article we are going to discuss what role object spy serves in quick test professional and how it is used in the same. 

What is an Object Spy?

- With the help of object spy the basic structure of any of the test objects can be known. 

- The best thing about object spy in quick test professional is that the structure of a particular object can be viewed in the tree format. 

- All this makes understanding of the test objects much easier. 

- In addition to this use, the object spy can also aid us in viewing the test object and run time properties as well as methods of all the objects present in the software system or application. 

How the object spy can be used in quick test professional?<>

- For launching object spy just go to tools menu and click on the object spy tab. 

- Clicking on this tab will open up a dialog box named “object spy”.

- In that dialog box you need to select the application software whose object methods and properties you wish to see. 

- After this in the object spy window you need to select the pointer image. 

- All the objects present in that particular application will be listed and from these you can select the one whose object methods and properties you wish to view. 

- There are two particular things that can be viewed using the object spy as mentioned below:

1. Properties of a specific object and
2. Methods applicable for that object.

- Many different properties of the selected objects can be viewed. 

- This viewing of the object methods and properties is facilitated by the pointing hand mechanism of the object spy. 

- As this pointer is hovered above the objects, their corresponding methods and properties are displayed in the window of the object spy dialog box. 

- The details of the object may also include the hierarchy tree of the test objects. 

- The object spy also displays the syntax for the object methods at your command. 

- Different properties can be viewed in different environments. 

- Objects such as following can be viewed using the object spy in quick test professional:

1. Dialog
2. Static
3. Active X
4. Edit and so on.

- The object spy can be considered to be the same as the GUI spy that comes with the winrunner. 

- The object spy contributes a lot while writing descriptive programming. 

- In object, the properties of the objects are displayed along with their corresponding values. 

- Object spy is such a feature provided by the quick test professional with which the total information regarding the objects can be obtained.

- There are 3 tabs in the object spy dialog box namely:

1. Properties tab
2. Methods tab and
3. Navigation tab

- Clicking on the properties tab all the properties of the objects along with the values and hierarchy tree are displayed. 

- Clicking on the methods tab all the methods of the test objects and run time objects are displayed. - Clicking on the navigation tab, the tool bar is displayed. 

- Object spy just like the gui spy of the winrunner is an in built feature. 

- For opening the object spy apart from just clicking on the object spy option on the tool bar there are two more ways:

1. Go to the object repository window and double click the object spy icon.
2. After opening the object repository navigate to the tools and select the object spy option. 

How to perform Cross platform testing and Cross browser testing using QTP?

Two types of particular testings can be performed easily using the quick test professional and they are mentioned below:

1. Cross platform testing and
2. Cross browser testing

What is meant by cross platform?

Cross platform can be defined as an attribute that can be given to a software system or application that can be operated across multiple computer platforms. Today there are two types of cross platform softwares available as mentioned below:

1. Softwares that require individual compilation for each platform that is supported by them and
2. Softwares that require no individual compilation and can be run directly on any platform that they support.

For a software system or application to be entitled as cross platform software it is required that it operates successfully on both the following:

   1. More than one operating system and

   2. Computer architecture.

- Checking a software whether or not it is cross platform compatible is a time consuming activity since all the different operating systems come with a different API or application programming interface. 

- Whenever a software system or application is designed as such that it can support multiple platforms, the demand for its quality assurance increases dramatically. 

- For ensuring this quality the cross platform testing is carried out.

What is meant by cross browser?

- Cross browser is an attribute for web sites, web applications, client side scripts and HTML constructs which are able to perform well in the environments or browsers which have the required features and also in the browsers and environments which lack those features. 

- Today, there are many browsers available and all of them are used by the end users for accessing the same web site or web application. 

- Therefore, it has become equally important that the web site or web application must be able to function properly on all web browsers. 

- This is ensured only by carrying out the cross browser testing.

- Also, the same request made on a web site or web application is handled differently by different browsers.

- Cross browser testing not just tests the client side of the web application but it also tests the server side behavior of the web site or application. 

- Therefore, there are two types of cross browser testing:

1. Server side cross browser testing
2. Client side cross browser testing

Now coming to how the cross platform testing and cross browser testing is performed using quick test professional. For performing these two types of testing in quick test professional you need to create separate actions for operating systems as well as browsers. 

How Cross Platform Testing is performed in QTP

- The cross platform testing can be facilitated with the help of built-in environment variable in quick test professional since using it one can dig up the information of the operating system. 

- Later, the actions recorded on this particular platform can be called. 

- On the other hand, using the actions created for the browsers you can extract the browser information. 

- The actions that are relevant to that particular browser should only be called. 

How Cross Browser Testing is performed in QTP?

Before beginning with the cross browser testing you need to get the type of browser that you are using by following an example mentioned below:

Browser( “core values”)

For getting a particular version of a browser,

getROproperty( “version” )

- Any dynamic browser changes are not allowed in quick test professional while the scripts are in running mode. 

- These scripts need to be configured for the current browser. 

- Also, you should set up the driver scripts in the beginning itself so that you can easily change your configuration settings whenever required. 

What is QTP? Which environments are supported by QTP?

QTP or quick test professional is another very useful testing tool from HP (Hewett Packard) like others such as winrunner, test director and so on. 

Well, the quick test profession has been designed especially for testing methodologies that are quite rigorous in nature such as functional testing and regression testing. 

What is Quick Test Professional?

- Quick test professional is a sole creation of HP software division unlike the other softwares that were actually developed by mercury interactive and hired by HP. 

- Although the code for this testing suite was written by mercury interactive itself.

- The most stable release of the quick test professional till now has been the 11.0 version. 

- Quick test professional can only be operated on Microsoft windows operating system. 

- The quick test professional or QTP is categorized under the category of test automation tools since it facilitates the automation of the functional and regression tests. 

- The quick test professional forms a part of the HP’s quality center tool suite and can be very well used in the enterprise quality assurance. 

- The license of this testing suite is proprietary. 

-The following aspects are most supportable by quick test professional:

1. Key word interfaces
2. Scripting interfaces

- The quick test professional like the other testing suites by HP sports a quite good graphical user interface. 

- The quick test professional makes use of the VBScript i.e., the visual basic scripting edition scripting language for making the specifications of a test procedure. 

- Apart from this, the visual basic scripting language is used for the manipulation of the objects as well as controls of the software system or application that is currently under test. 

- The quick test professional carries out the regression testing and functional testing by means of a user interface which may be either a web interface or some native graphical user interface. 

- The working principle of the quick test professional is that is works through the identification of the several GUI objects present in the graphical user interface or some web page. 

- It can also perform the following functions:

1. Performing desired operations which may consist of user events like mouse click or generating some input from key board.
2. Capturing object properties such as handler ID, object name and so on.

- The visual basic scripting language is used by the quick test professional only for accomplishing short and simple tasks.

- For performing complex and big tasks, it is required that you modify the VBScript that lies underneath the code.

What environments are supported by QTP?

Regarding the environments, quick test professional is known to support most of the environments since it is quite advance as compared to its old counterpart- the winrunnner. 

There are so many releases of quick test professional as mentioned below:

1. 5.5- first release in the year of 2001
2. 6.0 – released in 2002
3. 6.5 – released in 2003
4. 7.0 – this version was never released.
5. 8.0 – released in 2004
6. 8.2 – released in 2005
7. 9.0 – released in 2006
8. 9.1 – released in 2007
9. 9.2 – released in 2007
10. 9.5 – released in 2008
11. 10.0 – released in 2009
12. 11.0 – released in 2011

Different versions of quick test professional are known to support different number of environments based up on its capabilities and features.

However, the latest quick test professional version 11.0 is known to support the following:

1. Web
2. Java core
3. Java advanced
4. .net
5. WPF
6. SAP
7. Oracle
8. Siebel
9. Delphi
10. People soft
11. Stingray 1
12. Power builder
13. Flex
14. Terminal emulator
15. Mainframe terminal emulators
16. Windows mobile
17. Web services
18. Visual age Small talk
19. Silverlight