How many types of recording modes are there in QTP? Which will be used when?

Unlike Winrunner, Quick test professional comes with three types of recording modes. Two of them are same as what the winrunner had and one is new. 

The 3 types of recording modes available in quick test professional are:

1. Context sensitive recording
2. Analog recording and
3. Low level recording

Now let us discuss about these three recording modes in much detail one by one:

Context Sensitive Recording Mode

- The context sensitive recording mode is considered to be the normal recording mode in the quick test professional. 

- In this recording, full advantage of the test object model of the quick test professional can be taken. 

- In this mode the quick test professional can recognize a particular GUI object perfectly even if its location on the application screen is not known. 

- This recording takes place regardless of the location of the GUI objects on the application interface. 

- In this mode, the objects present in the software application and the operations that are performed in them are recorded. 

Analog Recording Mode

- Each and every movement of the mouse is tracked and recorded as it is dragged across the screen or some window. 

- The analog recording data captured by the quick test professional is saved as what are called tracks and these tracks are in turn saved in the directory of the test that you are going to perform. 

- This technique proves to be useful essentially for recording those operations whose recording cannot be carried out at the level of an object. 

- An example for such operation is making a signature by dragging of the mouse.

- With analog recording two types of recording can be done as stated below:

1. Recording relative to the screen and
2. Recording relative to the window.

- When you have to perform the analog operations pertain to just one window then you can very well go for the second one i.e., the recording relative to the window.

- On the other hand when your analog recording is to consist of multiple screen actions like dragging and dropping objects from one window to the other the former option i.e., the recording relative to the screen can be used.

The Low Level Recording Mode

 

- It is used for making recording easy at the level of the objects. 

- With this recording, you can record operations being performed on any of the objects present in the application software. 

- With this mode, even all of the run time objects can be recorded as:

1. Window test objects or
2. winObject test objects.

- This mode of recording is independent of whether the quick test professional is able to recognize the specific operation or the specific object. 

- This recording mode should only be used when your tests demand the exact coordinates of the objects.

- An example of this can be given by a hash map. 

-This mode is also used when the recording of a test in a particular environment is not provided recognition by the quick test professional.

- Using this, x and y coordinates of any click can be recorded.

- It has been noted that more disk space is used up in the analog and low level recording modes as compared to the context sensitive mode. 

- For both of the last two modes, one thing should always be kept in mind is that the position of the screen during the run time as well the record should remain identical otherwise the test script may fail. 

When do you go for Context Sensitive and Analog recordings? What's the difference between them?

Winrunner was developed as an automated load testing tool by the firm of HP (Hewett Packard) and it operated at the level of graphical user interface layer. You must be wondering why it was operated only at the GUI level? This is so because it was possible only at this level to record as well as play back the user actions from a large number of software systems and applications just as a real world user would do.

The winrunner provides us with two types of recordings namely context sensitive recording and analog recording. 

Context Sensitive Recording

- With the help of this mode all your actions on the software system or application in terms of the user interactions can  be recorded  while physically ignoring the location of the objects (windows, lists, buttons and so on) on the graphical user interface.

- Whenever some action is performed on the software system or application which is under question, the generation of a statement in TSL takes place. 

- As the recording goes on, a unique description for each and every selected object is written to a map called GUI map by the winrunner tool. 

- This GUI map keeps within itself all the files from the test scripts created by you and maintains all of them separately. 

- Suppose you fall in a condition where you got to change the graphical user interface of your software system or application.

- In such a case you only need to update all the test scripts present in the GUI map and you do not need to perform any 1000 number of tests. 

- With such a facility you not only save time but you are also able to reuse all of your context sensitive test scripts for the future versions of your software system or application that you plan to develop further. 

- In context sensitive recording, playing or running a test is quite easy and you just need to play back the associated test script. 

- A real world user is emulated by the winrunner software by carrying out user like options such as pointing the mouse to some object, selecting or deselecting the objects, entering words from keyboard and so on. 

- The object descriptions that we earlier had fed to the GUI map are read by the winrunner and then those objects are searched in the software application under test to match.  

- The objects can be tracked even if their placements have been changed. 

Analog Recording

- In this type of winrunner recording, mostly the events like those mentioned below are recorded by the winrunner:

a)    Mouse clicks

b)    Input entered via the key board

c)   The exact x and y coordinates travelled by the mouse pointer and so on.

- While the test is executed or the test scripts are played the mouse tracks are re- traced by the winruner.

- However, one thing should always be kept in mind that winrunner is used only when the exact mouse coordinates are of utmost important to your test case and also when you have to test some drawing software application. 

- It is almost impossible to capture the GUI elements like objects and windows with the analog recording. 

- To say it simply, the analog recording holds good for the software systems and applications containing bitmap areas.

If you starting afresh with the winrunner it is recommended that you go for context sensitive recording since here you don’t have to go for exact mouse tracks.