Borland Silktest 13

Borland Silktest 13 is a new version of formerly popular but effectively dead test automation tool. For some reason MicroFocus decided to start using the Borland name, while many companies are phasing out SilkTest gradually in the favor of free open source tools like Selenium.

Anyway there are good news for QA Testers who is still using this tool and for QA Managers who has a few thousand dollars to pay for the license. Borland SilkTest 13 finally provides preliminary playback support for the Google Chrome browser. It also provides playback support for web applications running in Firefox 7, Mozilla Firefox 8, Mozilla Firefox 9, Mozilla Firefox 10 and Mozilla Firefox 11. By the way I am writing this post in Firefox 12 and Selenium already has support for this version. Perhaps Microsoft Silverlight 4 is a nice feature, but there are not too many apps written in Microsoft Silverlight. I would prefer support for HTML5 in SilkTest 13. Perhaps the most useful new feature is the script debugging in SilkTest Workbench that lets QA Tester temporarily suspend script playback in the development environment to manage, examine, reset, step through, or continue script playback, but again isn't it too late to keep QA Testers?

Lastly I just want to note that the number 13 is considered to be an unlucky number in some countries, so I do not think it was a good idea to name the software as Borland Silktest 13.

SilkTest 2011 download ready

Starting today QA Testers can download SilkTest 2011 trial version from Micro Focus web site. SilkTest 2011 adds support for Microsoft Silverlight, Adobe Flex and enhances cross browser support by adding Internet Explorer 9, Firefox 5 and Firefox 6 browsers. Additional enhancements for regression and functional testing with Micro Focus Silk Test 2011 include User Access Compliance (UAC) for Microsoft Windows 7 to support effective testing in standard user privileges.

Silktest Interview Question 78 - How many programming languages can QA Engineer use in Micro Focus SilkTest?

Micro Focus SilkTest 2010 allows QA Testers to develop test cases scripts using different programing language such as 4Test, VB.Net, C#, or Java and various work environments SilkTest Classic, Microsoft Visual Studio or Eclipse, while SilkTest Workbench allows automation testing on recording and playback level for less skilled QA Testers. In the same time SilkTest test cases written in different languages share architecture through a common engine SilkTest Open Agent, which exposes UI object recognition, synchronization and test interfaces.

SilkTest jobs for QA Testers.

The table below compares the demand for SilkTest 2010, HP QTP 11 and Selenium skills in QA Tester jobs advertised across US and India in October of 2010. I compared the job postings for QA Engineer position with automated testing tool experience on the following job search engines: dice.com, sfbay.craigslist.org/sof/ (only for San Francisco Bay Area) and naukri.com

	dice.com	craigslist.org	naukri.com
SilkTest	35	6	15
QTP	560	9	302
Selenium	299	57	97

As you could see, Silktest is lagging behind of QTP or Selenium on all job markets, but I think I have an explanation why this is happening. There are plenty of QA Tester job postings like

Required skills - Test automation, SaaS, SQL, performance testing, Load Runner and QuickTest Professional, Silk Test, Java, Visual Basic.

Perhaps I should look for Silk not SilkTest, even it would include results for Silk Performer. Unfortunately as you can see below the change is not as big as I expected. I could explain why Selenium is so popular in Silicon Valley. As an open source project, Selenium is available for free and has been used for testing at many Silicon Valley companies like Google, Yahoo, and eBay. There are also a lot of startup companies not willing to spend money of SilkTest license or QTP license. That's why there are a lot of job postings for QA Testers with Selenium testing skills in Silicon Valley. In the same time I am still not sure why SilkTest lags behind of HP QTP on national markets. Does anyone have any ideas?

	dice.com	craigslist.org	naukri.com
Silk	69	6	87
QTP	560	9	302
Selenium	299	57	97

MicroFocus SilkTest 2010

The curious QA Tester should already notice availability of SilkTest 2010 trial download on MicroFocus web site.The first thing you will notice is the size of download SilkTest 2010 package - 694 MB, the previous version SilkTest 2009 R2 download size was just around 200 MB. The reason is that now SilkTest 2010 product suite includes the following components:

• SilkTest Workbench is the completely new, native quality testing environment that offers .NET
scripting for power users and innovative storyboard-based visual tests to make testing more accessible.
• Silk4NET is plug-in for Microsoft Visual Studio that allows QA Testers to efficiently create and manage functional, regression, and localization tests directly in the Visual Studio using Visual Basic or C#.
• Silk4J is plug-in for Eclipse enables QA Testers to create Java-based test scripts.
• SilkTest Recorder – enables QA Testers to record and replay tests using a GUI and then export
those tests to SilkTest Classic, Silk4J, or Silk4NET.
• SilkTest Classic is the traditional, 4Test SilkTest product.
• SilkTest Agents is the software process that translates the commands in tests into GUI-specific commands.

SilkTest 2010 supports applications that use the following browsers or are developed in Adobe Flex, Firefox, Internet Explorer, SAP, Win 32, WinForms and WPF. Micro Focus Silk Test 2010 supports the following databases SQL Server 2005, SQL Server 2005, Oracle 11.1 and Oracle 11.2. SilkTest 2010 license policy didn’t change and requires installation SilkMeter 2008 or later with proper SilkTest license policy.

Silktest Interview Question 77 - How to download latest SilkTest 2009 trial version?

Last week Micro Focus, a leading provider of enterprise application modernization, testing and management solutions, announced the availability of SilkTest 2009 R2 and Silk4J 2009 R2 from Borland Software Corporation. Without a doubt Silk Test 2009 is quality choice for automated regression and functional software testing, but I wonder why Micro Focus labels the latest Silk Test version as 2009 R2. It is 2010 already, so label this famous automation test application as SilkTest 2010. The trial version of SilkTest is available for free download.

The latest version of SilkTest 2009 R2 also includes the following significant enhancements

Improved Open Agent Technology – Dynamic Object Recognition allows for a decoupling of an application's Graphical User Interface (GUI) object hierarchy from its representation in test scripts, resulting in significantly lower script maintenance.

Advanced synchronization capabilities eliminate the need to modify test scripts to include wait times, providing advanced automation for testing today’s dynamic Web applications.

Full cross-browser AJAX support – Silk Test now provides completely automatic synchronization for testing Web2.0 applications on Firefox 3.0 and 3.5 as well as Internet Explorer, 6, 7 and 8 through its open agent technology.

Enhanced support for system functions by the SilkTest Open Agent.

Dynamic Port Allocation – The SilkTest Open Agent also now uses dynamically allocated ports. The dynamic port allocation feature for the open agent makes it possible to leverage the supported technologies for SilkPerformer 2009 R2 GUI value unit tests.

Silktest Interview Question 76 - Why do we need to use SilkTest 2009 ?

Could you convince QA manager to invest money in buying SilkTest 2009 license for your QA organization, while QA manager doesn't like test automation and doesn't understand the reasons of using of Silk Test 2009? What is the point of starting the Firefox or IE browser using 4Test or Silk4J code, selecting radio button, checking check boxes, clicking buttons and verifying the text with the help of test scripts written in 4Test or Silk4J code? It is much easier to ask manual QA Tester to just click around the web site and visually verify that everything works as expected in the application, and even run a couple of SQL quires.

One of the ways to persuade QA Manager in investing time and money into developing test automation framework would be to ask him/her to test the application yourself during several QA cycles. It would be virtually impossible to test the application manually, because the testing becomes so prone to human error that no one can guarantee the testing was done right. In the same time Silktest 2009 can repeat the same mundane tests over and over without any complaints. The payoff of using Silk Test 2009 is the ability to change the application code frequently and almost immediately know that the change didn't brake anything. The test automation tool lets QA team to tests against browser interface, but in the same time Silktest SQL features allow direct interaction with databases like MS SQL, Oracle and MySQL to compare results of test execution and prove the web site is working duly.

Silktest Interview Question 75: Can Silktest 2009 do load testing?

Micro Focus SilkTest 2009 does not provide load testing capabilities and mainly used as functional testing tool. In the same time, a shrewd test automation engineer could easily integrate SilkTest 2009 with SilkPerformer 2009 to provide GUI Virtual User testing to validate performance and scalability when client-side performance.

Silktest Interview Question 74: What Silktest 2009 editions are available?

• Micro Focus SilkTest 2009, support test case recording, editing, execution and results analysis.
• SilkTest Silk4J, An eclipse plug-in to enable Java as a Scripting Language.
• SilkTest Runtime, is a scaled-down version of Silk Test 2009 that provides a cost-effective way to run existing functional tests and analyze results, this edition require SilkCentral Test Manager 2009.

Borland is no more

The acquisition of the famous Borland by Micro Focus is complete. By acquiring Borland, Micro Focus is looking to take on Hewlett Packard, who is the leading provider of application testing tools with its HP Quality Center based on technology it acquired from Mercury Interactive a few years ago.

Silktest Interview Question 73: What licenses are available for Silktest 2009?

Borland SilkTest 2009 is offered both in named-user and concurrent use license models.

Borland Silk 2009 or Micro Focus SilkTest 2009

Borland has announced Silk 2009, a comprehensive software test suite designed to support the testing needs of both Agile and traditional development teams by simplifying testing activities, increasing the speed of test execution and integrating with a customer's existing test tools and frameworks to provide a consolidated view of quality across the software delivery life-cycle.
Borland Silk 2009 includes newest functionality that makes it easy for both software and quality assurance engineers to create and automate tests, minimizing the dependency on specialist skills while making testing a more scalable and efficient process.

The Silk 2009 toolset includes :

• Borland SilkTest 2009 Borland's functional and regression testing product, lets developers create and automate robust functional and regression tests in pure Java within the Eclipse IDE with Silk4J. SilkTest 2009 introduces support for Winforms (Microsoft .NET 3.X) and full cross-browser support for Internet Explorer 6, 7 & 8 and Firefox 3.0 Silk Test 2009 provides further enhancements for Open Agent and Java as a scripting Language capability, Silk4J, including an action recorder to create scripts in either Java or 4Test.

• Borland SilkPerformer 2009 dramatically simplifies the process of managing testing environments, enabling fluid allocation of test resources, and speeding the creation of performance and load tests.

• Borland SilkCentral Test Manager 2009 is a unified framework for managing quality and testing activities across all projects. SilkCentral Test Manager 2009 ships with more than 25 integrations to commercial and open source requirements management, source code control and testing tools, including JUnit, NUnit, FitNesse, and Watir.

Borland SilkPerformer 2009 and SilkCentral Test Manager 2009 are available immediately. Borland SilkTest 2009 is planned to be available for download on August 12, 2009.

SilkTest 2009 license starts at $4,000, while SilkPerformer 2009 license starts at $10,000 and SilkCentral Test Manager 2009 license begin at $1,700.

Micro Focus Silktest

In May Borland Software said that it has agreed to be acquired in its entirety by Micro Focus International in a $75 million cash transaction, unanimously approved by the boards of both companies.

Micro Focus currently support object-oriented COBOL compilers targeting the .NET framework and most likely expects the Borland acquisition to help it gain greater market share, increase its customer base, and capture a larger penetration of the U.S. technology market

A few words about Micro Focus from Wikipedia :

The company was founded in 1976 and became Micro Focus Group in 1983. In its early years it concentrated on COBOL products. In 1998 the Company acquired Intersolv Inc, an applications enablement business, for $534 million and the combined business was renamed Merant. In 2001 the business was demerged from Merant with help from Golden Gate Capital Partners and once again became Micro Focus. It was listed on the London Stock Exchange in 2005. On 6 May 2009, it announced the purchase of Borland and the Quality Solutions part of Compuware.

All your base are belong to us.

Silk Test Interview Question 73: Silktest vs QTP comparasion?

I'm always surprised to read in the requirement for Automation Test Engineer something like "5+ years test automation experience, including contributing to automation framework development and developing and maintaining Seque SilkTest or HP / Mercury QTP test suites". For me it means that hiring company does not have any test automation tools at all and you will be the very first test automation engineer to hire. In the same time I consider this QA interview questions "describe advantages and disadvantages of HP QTP vs SilkTest" as perfectly valid software engineer interview question.

Let's take a look on both test automation tool and compare QTP vs Silktest without any comparison tables.

HP QTP and Silktest have one major drawback in common there is no a single HP QTP book or SilkTest book published yet except tutorials you get in the box. It means in case you want to advance your career as test automation engineer you have to take an expensive courses.

HP QTP fits more for less technical tester who will just try to do a basic record-and-playback. The Quality Assurance Engineer with object oriented programming experience should select SilkTest as tool in case s/he wants to treat automated testing as real development project.

Borland SilkTest works with 4Test scripting language and Java programming language with a help of Silk4j Eclipse Plugin, while HP QTP works with a scripting language implemented on top of VBScript. In both cases you need to have someone familiar with language. Consider to take a look on Selenium, because Selenium allow to code test scripts in Java, .Net, Perl, Python, Ruby and PHP.

Most critical part in selection test automation tool is what type of application you want to test. SQA Engineer should evaluate HP QTP, Silktest and probably Selenium against testing requirement and then make a decision.

Update
A few QTP books have been released recently on market, for detailed review look at review Best Books for QTP

SilkTest Jobs

In the past few months, everyone has noticed a major shakeout in tech industry. Many Bay Area technology companies announced major layoffs or even have shut their doors. As result, salaries and hourly rates are going down. I just noticed on Bay Area Craigslist this open SilkTest contractor position. Don't you think that $40 per hour is very low for QA Tester with the knowledge of SilkTest, Python, Perl, VBScript and C++?

Location: Santa Clara
Duration: 4.5 month
Rate: $40/hr

Solid software company is looking for a QA Tester with solid SilkTest experience.

Must have:
- Authoring, implementing, and maintaining automation test libraries and scripts using SilkTest - Automation experience
- Ability to work with QA engineers to convert manual test procedures into automated systems
- Scripting experience (Python, Perl, VBScript)
- Programming with C++ is ideal

SilkTest Interview Question 72: How to use SilkTest in agile testing?

I believe there is no doubt that certain agile manifesto principles, such as "welcome changing requirements, even late in development" or "deliver working software frequently, from a couple of weeks to a couple of months, with a preference to the shorter timescale" would make SilkTest test automation engineer wince. Does it mean SilkTest that automated script for complicated business requirement created yesterday won't work tomorrow or test automation engineer would have less time to develop SilkTest scripts which can transform as often as requirement? Fortunately Silk Test works very well in agile environment. The agile development delivers new functionality every round, and this requires automated regression testing. The automation test engineer has to work in parallel with development team on automated tests. The crucial point for successful implementation of SilkTest scripts is making sure that the developers name all object, one more helpful approach is to set up daily continuous builds and run the scripts to make sure that the new build didn't break any SilkTest 2008 scripts.

Borland jobs

Just after having celebrated Borland (BORL) 25th birthday, the famous company announced the resignation of Tod Nielsen as CEO, within hours, VMWare (VMW) announced the appointments of Tod Nielsen as COO. In addition to this news Borland is laying off 130 employees, or approximately 15 percent of its regular full-time staff. The stock price hovers just below $0.85. Will Borland survive another crisis?

Silktest jobs

Looks like job market for Silktest QA engineer shrank dramatically in the last few year. Based on this two years old post open position for test automation tool specialist, there was 184 open SilkTest position on Dice.com, and 17 Silktest jobs on sfbay.craigslist.org. Right now these jobs search engines offer just 54 and 4 Silk Test jobs respectively. Where did all the jobs go? One may think that most of these jobs were outsourced to भारत गणराज्य, but how about 104 results for Selenium jobs on dice.com and 23 open Selenium position in sfbay.craigslist.org. It seems despite Borland's efforts to revive SilkTest, more and more companies are looking for free open source test automation tool like Selenium. Perhaps Borland should start slashing SilkTest price ?

SilkTest Question 71: Does SilkTest support Chrome browser?

Today Google officially released a test version of its Internet browser called Chrome. It is definitely exceptionally early to expect that Borland would provide support for Chrome browsers in SilkTest in the nearby future. Keep in mind that Internet Explorer is still commands more than 75 percent of the world browser market. In mean time, download Chrome browser and became proverbial with new kid on the search-engine world. If you really believe that your company would expect quality assurance team to test application in Chrome browser, look at Selenium open source test automation tool. Not long ago, the creator of Selenium Jason Randolph Huggins was hired by Google, and I expect that support for Chrome browser would appear in Selenium much faster then in SilkTest. So download Chrome browser on your machine and take pleasure in more cross browser testing.

SilkTest Question 70: How to compare PDF document with SilkTest

Even in SilkTest 2008 SP1, there is no support for PDF documents, however, seasoned SQA Engineer can easily figure out how retrieve contents of a PDF document by using Desktop.TypeKeys("") and Desktop.TypeKeys("") to copy the contents to the clipboard and use the clipboard class to work with the contents of the document by saving the contents to a text file for further analysis. The above method is limited to only text and does not retrieve images on PDF documents.