The job market for automation testing tools

The jobs postings for quality assurance engineers from popular job search engines shows that Winrunner again leads in the virtual race.

The search result from dice.com on June,28 2006:

• silktest - 175 jobs
• winrunner - 537 jobs

Both tools added around 10-15 job request comparing with last month.

The search result from Craigslist for San Francisco Bay Area on May,28 2006:

• silktest - 26 jobs
• winrunner - 30 jobs

Both tool added a few job and it seems job market is still going up.

SilkTest Question 26: How to repair *** Error: Application not ready error?

During automated regression testing of web based application QA Engineer presses one of the browser controls and gets the error described below:
*** Error: Application is not ready Occured in WaitForReady

The QA engineer could mumble only that the error above is not consistent, it happens sometimes on one of the computer on QA lab, but last month the same 4Test script works perfect on all computers during testing of previous release of the same application.


It looks like your web based application takes to long to respond and SilkTest times out. In this case the usual solution is to boost the timeout values. The test developer can set timeout values for individual script or set globally

The first value to check is 4Test agent OPT_APPREADY_TIMEOUT option, the number of seconds that agent waits for an application to become ready.

The second value to check nInvokeTimeout, an integer that specifies the number of seconds that SilkTest waits to the main window of application to appear.

SilkTest Question 25: How to fix the explorer6_Dom[1] error?

We have a few test scripts written by outsourced QA team in 4test language for regression testing of our web based application. During test script execution the error message ***Error: Window '[MainWin]$explorer6_Dom[1]' was not found appears. The problem is that the error message above is not shown every time when I run script, sometimes the code runs just fine, but it may happen that if I execute testing again the DOM error message appears. Not a single engineer in our QA team is able to find answer in SilkTest documentation. We asked for help from outsourced testing team, but they do not have any clue at all.

One of the solutions to fix *** Error: Window '[MainWin]$explorer6_DOM[1]' was not found is to verify that "Enable Third Party Browser Extensions" option of Internet Explorer is checked. You can find it under Tools/Internet Options/Advanced
Do not forget to reboot your computer after enabling this options.

SilkTest Question 24: What is the limitation of Silk Test automation tool?

The tool for automation testing has the following limitations:

Silk Test may not recognize some window frames.
Occasionally it will be thorny to activate application window.
It may be necessary to make some modifications if testing should be shifted to other browser/operating system.
Silk Test sometimes may not recognize some objects in a window or page because of various technical reasons.
The 'tag' value may get changed repeatedly.
During functional testing of web based applications, very often Silk Test will take the links as simple text.

SilkTest Question 23: How to set up proxy setting with 4test code?

In preparation for QA interview I try to develop script for setting up proxy server for Internet Explorer 6.0. So far I found two windows registry keys where proxy data are located on my Microsoft Windows XP testing machine.

I may turn proxy server on or off with 1 or 0 modifying
HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Internet Settings\ProxyEnable

I may define proxy server ip and port modifying
HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Internet Settings\ProxyServer

What to do next?


The code below contain Silk Test code for turning on specified proxy server and as your home work for QA interview you can easily modify script for turning off proxy server. By the way before you change the registry, make sure to back it up and make sure that you or someone else in your company know how to restore the registry if a problem occurs or play with this script only on test environment.

[ ] // Turns on specified proxy
[ ] // sProxyName -> ip:port
[+] configureProxyServer(STRING sProxyName)
[ ]
[ ] integer iKey = HKEY_CURRENT_USER
[ ] string sPath = "Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Internet Settings\"
[ ] string sProxyServer = "ProxyServer"
[ ] string sProxyEnable = "ProxyEnable"
[ ] string sProxyOn = "REG_DWORD: 0x00000001"
[-] do
[ ] SYS_GetRegistryValue(iKey, sPath, sProxyServer, TRUE)
[ ] SYS_SetRegistryValue(iKey, sPath, sProxyServer, sProxyName)
[-] except
[ ] Reg_CreateValue(iKey, sPath, sProxyServer, serverName)
[ ]
[-] do
[ ] SYS_GetRegistryValue(iKey, sPath, sProxyServer, TRUE)
[ ] SYS_SetRegistryValue(iKey, sPath, sProxyEnable, sProxyOn)
[-] except
[ ] Reg_CreateValue(iKey, sPath, sProxyEnable, sProxyOn)
[ ]
[ ]