What is meant by Check points? What are the types of Check points? In what situation will you use it in WinRunner?

Well no matter whether you are a developer or a tester, you must have heard about the winrunner! Yes we are talking about the wondrous functional testing tool from Hewett Packard (HP). Until the advent of the QTP or quick test pro, the winrunner was the much preferred functional testing tool and has been the favorite of a majority of the testers. 

This functional testing tool winrunner provides the service of recording and playing back the user interactions to the user. These user interactions or events are the ones that take place at the level of graphical user interfaces. The winrunner can be thought of as a complete functional testing suite that has been well known for the support it has provided all along to the enterprises for the maintenance of the quality assurance.

- It came with three quite important and useful functions mentioned below:

1. Capturing of the user interactions or events.
2. Verification of those captured events.
3. Playing back those recorded actions.

These above mentioned functions of the winrunner have proved to be extremely useful in the identification of the defects as well as in the determination of the well working of all the business processes involved with the software development life cycle. 

In this article we are focusing up on one of the important aspects of the winrunner called check points. We are going to discuss what exactly the check points are and what their types are and where and when exactly they should be implemented in winrunner.

What are Check Points and what are its types?

- The check points have made it possible to make comparisons between the current behavior of the software system or application and the behavior that was shown by its earlier versions. 

- There are 4 types of check points have been defined as mentioned below:

1. GUI check points
2. Bit map check points
3. Text check points
4. Data base check points

GUI Check Points

- The GUI check points are known for the verification of the information related to the objects of the graphical user interface like:

1. Single object single property
2. Multiple object multiple properties
3. Single object multiple property etc.

Bit map Check Points

- The Bit map check points are known for their application in taking the snap shot of a window of the software system or application that is being tested. 

- This currently taken snap shot is then subjected to comparison with some snap shot of the earlier version of the same software system or application.

Text Check Points

- The text check points are known for the aid they provide in reading the text present in the bit map images and GUI objects and also for the aid they provide in the verification of the textual contents.

Data base Check Points

- The data base check points are known for their use in the checking of the number of rows and columns of a result spread sheet and its contents based up on a query created by the tester on that particular data base.

How Check Points are used in WinRunner?

The check points are used in winrunner whenever any one of the following three checks is required:

1. Custom check
2. Default check and
3. Run time record check

All of the above three checks can be easily carried out with the help of data base check points. No matter how small might be the role of these check points is in the winrunner, they have proved to be a valuable asset to the testers.