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 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.

SilkTest Question 41: What is the latest version of Silktest?

In the preparation for interviewing, I like to review the resume of potential QA Tester candidate to verify time line of using correct version of SilkTest tool and if I see something like "Automated regression testing of new builds utilizing Segue SilkTest" dated between 2000-2002, I would definitely ask about version of automated test tool you were using back then. So I would recommend updating as soon as possible your QA resume with published below short version of Silktest releases.

• June, 2012 - Borland SilkTest 13
• November, 2011 - Micro Focus SilkTest 2011
• May, 2011 - Micro Focus SilkTest 2010 R2 WS 2
• December, 2010 - Micro Focus SilkTest 2010 R2
• July, 2010 - Micro Focus SilkTest 2010
• August 12, 2009 - SilkTest 2009
• July, 2008 - SilkTest 2008 SP1
• April, 2008 - SilkTest 2008
• September, 2007 - SilkTest 2006 R2 Service Pack 2
  
• June, 2007 - SilkTest 2006 Release 2 Service Pack 1
  
• January, 2007 - Silk Test 2006 R2
  
• September, 2006 - SilkTest 2006
• May, 2006 - SilkTest 8.0
• September, 2005 - SilkTest 7.6
• June, 2005 - SilkTest 7.5
• October, 2004 - SilkTest 7.1
• November 2003, - SilkTest 6.5
• November 2002, - SilkTest 6.0
• September 1999, - SilkTest 5.0.1
• November 1996, - QA partner 4.0 as part of QualityWorks client/server testing suite

What is the latest version of QuickTest Professional?