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.

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.

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?

Borland SilkTest 2008 SP1 is available for download

Borland SilkTest 2008 SP1 is officially available. 470 MB of SilkTest 2008 downloads are available for all Silk Test 2008 customers:

The new features are

• Silk4J Eclipse Plugin - Silk4J enables Quality Assurance Engineers to create functional tests using the Java programming language. Silk4J plugin requires Eclipse 3.3;
• Java SWT/RCP Support for the SilkTest Open Agent - Quality Assurance Engineers can create projects or scripts for Java SWT and Eclipse applications that use the next generation Open Agent;
• Java SWT Sample Applications - SilkTest 2008 SP1 includes a Java SWT 3.2 and 3.3 sample application, which use the SilkTest Open Agent.
• Enabling Extensions for the Open Agent Using the Command Line - QA Engineers can specify a command line pattern that Silk Test 2008 SP1 uses to enable extensions for the Open Agent.

Borland SilkTest 2008 Release Notes

Let's imagine that Borland SilkTest 2008 has been released and available for download, so we are going through the first few lines of release notes for Borland Silk Test 2008:

What's New
This section lists significant enhancements and changes that were made for the SilkTest 2008 release

Integration in development process
SilkTest 2008 introduces Eclipse plug-in to allow test development to be done within the Eclipse IDE.

Multi-language support
SilkTest 2008 implements the ability of using 4Test, Java or Python as coding language.

Flex Support
Silk Test 2008 now supports the following technologies Adobe Flex 2.x and 3.0

I hope you understood it were the imaginable release notes, but I still anticipate Borland has very strong commitment to Silk Test and that we will see all features described above and other great things coming over the next months.

Borland SilkTest

From today's news :

Borland Software Corp (BORL) will cut about 8 percent of its work force, or about 90 employees, and close facilities in six locations as part of an ongoing restructuring plan, Borland said in a filing on Friday.

I haven't tracked the performance of BORL for a while, but today's entire market capitalization based on current $2.9 per share price is around $210 million. It seems the best chances Borland SilkTest has to survive is if someone like Google, HP, Oracle or Microsoft decides to buy Borland out while the company is cheap. In the same time I personally afraid of is that the purchaser may not feel sturdily how superb SilkTest comparing with Selenium or HP QTP and soon will dump Borland SilkTest.

Borland releases SilkTest 2006 Release 2

On 25th January 2007 Borland announced the release of SilkTest 2006 Release 2, which has a lot of new features:

• Password Encryption
• Calling DLL Functions
• Silk TrueLog Explorer for SilkTest
• .NET DataGridView
• Timer Functions
• Synchronizing Controls for Verification

I updated the following Silktest FAQ interview questions:

• 41: What is the latest version of Silk test?
• 29: How to hide password in the 4test script file?
• 3 : Is SilkTest Extension Kit part of Silk Test?

SilkTest 2006 released by Borland

I suspect the main reason for fresh release is only marketing in addition to Borland JBuilder 2006, Borland Delphi 2006, Borland C++ Builder 2006, Borland C# Builder 2006 the customers are going to have Borland SilkTest 2006. Reading through release notes I see that only two bugs were fixed in the new release and automation tool packaged with TrueLog Explorer which supposes to simplify root cause analysis of test case failures via visual verification. The SilkTest 2006 supports integration with Borland's StarTeam 2005, but you need to buy one. SilkTest International is no more and it is included in the new version and the same happened with .Net support. The bad new is that the price of upgraded automated tool skyrocketed from $6,500 to $9,000 and the same deal appears with SilkTest runtime license it went up to $4,000 from $3,250. Is time to buy BORL? Not yet! SilkTest 2006 only works in an United States locale environment (locale is a set of user preference information related to the user's language, environment and/or cultural conventions). As we all know Windows XP includes support 136 different locales and Borland tested tool only for one of them.

SilkTest 8.0 released by Borland

I noticed just a few days ago in my blog posting SilkTest 8.0 is coming that probably we will see a new version of Silk Test very soon as an answer to Mercury Interactives's Quick Test Pro 9.0 and today Borland announced in press release about releasing improved version of application for automated testing. Actually I not expected that they will make it live so fast and I guess Segue already had some prototype in progress.

I briefly looked over technical specifications and I definately like the following features of SilkTest 8.0: it can be used for testing web based applications running in the Firefox 1.5 and Microsoft Internet Explorer 7.

SilkTest 8.0 is coming

On recently updated supported environment page for SilkTest 7.6.1 the meticulous QA Engineer may notice petite mentioning of expected release of SilkTest 8.0. Borland (BORL) will phase out support in SilkTest 8.0 for some older technologies like Windows 2000, Internet Explorer 5.x, Netscape 6.x and so on, but there are no any information about support for new environment and when the new version will be released.

As some of QA Engineers know Borland's competitor in automated testing tools Mercury Interactive (MERQ) added support of Web services, .NET 2.0, Firefox 1.5, Netscape 8, Macromedia Flex 2, Win XP 64 bit, Internet Explorer 7 to the new version of QTP 9.0 introduced on April 3th, 2006.

Will Borland strike back?

Borland Software to cut work force by 300 employees.

I hope this lay off didn't affect the former Segue company employees and Borland will continue to work on Silk Test improvement and soon we would be able to evaluate and buy a new enhanced version of Silk Test.

Struggling Borland Software Corp. on Wednesday announced plans to lay off 300 employees, or about 20 percent of its work force, in a cost-cutting move aimed at reversing the company's recent losses.

Now Borland is trying to bounce back again after losing $29.8 million in 2005. The company widened the loss Tuesday from a previously reported $28.5 million after concluding that inadequate oversight over its accounting practices had caused some invoices to be improperly recorded in its financial statements.

Borland also restated its third quarter-results, widening its third-quarter loss to $5.3 million -- $446,000 higher than the company previously reported.

The headaches have discouraged investors. The company's stock price has plummeted by nearly 60 percent since the end of 2004. Borland's shares ( BORL )fell 6 cents to $4.94 during Wednesday's trading on the Nasdaq Stock Market.

Silktest Question 11: What is the Borland Testing Methodology?

Borland testing methodology is a six-phase testing process:

Plan: Define the testing strategy and determine specific test requirements.

Capture: Categorize the GUI objects in your application and construct a framework for running your tests.

Create: Create automated, reusable tests. Use recording and/or programming to build test scripts written in Silktest's 4Test language.

Run: Select required tests scripts and execute them against the AUT (Application Under Test).

Report: Examine test results and create defect reports.

Track: Track defects in the AUT and perform regression testing.

Borland SilkTest

The letter from Tod Nielsen - President and CEO, Borland Software

I am very excited today to announce that Borland and Segue Software are now officially operating as one company.

This is a great move for both of our organizations as we come together to tackle what we all know to be a key development challenge and the biggest opportunity for our industry — software quality. Borland and Segue have long shared a common belief that the challenge of software quality reaches far beyond testing and QA. Together we will approach this issue holistically, providing value at each stage of the software delivery lifecycle.

Our focus now is on the development of a comprehensive Lifecycle Quality Management solution — bringing together our unparalleled process improvement expertise with proper skills training and a true end-to-end quality technology offering. Our goal is alignment of people, process and technology, proactively driving higher standards of software quality while systematically reducing costs associated with rework and maintenance.

While continuing to enhance Segue’s quality and application performance technologies, we will also focus on delivering even tighter linkage with Borland’s broad portfolio of Application Lifecycle Management technologies. As part of a complete solution, these technologies will address quality across the entire lifecycle, eliminating quality issues at the root cause.

I hope that you share in the excitement of Borland and Segue coming together and more information can be found in our press release. We look forward to speaking with you more as we move our combined company forward, bringing to market solutions that shape the next generation of software development.

Silktest Question 5 : Why did Borland buy Segue?

Nielsen, Borland's president and chief executive officer said

Segue’s quality optimization products and services will add significantly to our growing portfolio of application lifecycle management solutions. This is a natural extension of our focus to expand beyond development and into software delivery, helping companies increase business value through successful software initiatives.

The decision to expand our emphasis on applicaion lifecycle management, and at the same time enable our IDE business to get the attention it deserves, enables us to do what’s right for our business, what’s right for our customers, and what’s right for the future of software development.

The Segue had suite of industry-leading products include automated tools for:

• Test Management to provide a process-driven approach for planning, documenting and managing the entire testing process
• Functional & Regression Testing to verify your application's ability to accurately address all requirements from build to build
• Load, Stress & Performance Testing to maximize your application's performance, scalability and reliability by simulating real-world conditions before it goes live
• Application Performance Management to to evaluate end-user experience and service-level fulfillment of your live application 24x7x365