We have got a .NET application (VB / VS2010) and the project has been running for around 2 years now. There isn’t any development approach based on a testing methodology, e.g. no unit testing etc. And we won’t be able to do that in hindsight due to various time and money constraints.
The testing so far is done manually, which as you’d expect is getting a bit time consuming.
The app itself is based on .NET 4.0, written in VB, based on WinForms and a few third party Forms components.
What we’d really need is an automated test tool. The app consists of around 100 different screens. There is also an advanced authorisation concept implemented, i.e. the GUI elements are sometimes greyed out or not visible, depending on the permissions of the user.
Could anybody here recommend a good approach to testing or a good test tool? Ideally the test tool wouldn’t be horribly expensive, though that is obviously relative. Any suggestions are welcome ideally with advantages and drawbacks.
Thanks all in advance!
If you have a dedicated QA for automation testing with enough programming skills, my proposal is to use Selenium (http://seleniumhq.org/). Basically it provides test recording but my suggestion is to code your functional UI tests in order to be reusable. This is a good beginning for automation testing of your project. All the verification you mention related to disable of some controls depending on the user rights or invisibility of the controls can be cover with Selenium Automation Test cases. I use it with Java but as you can see in the manual it can be used with some other programming language.
Other tool I used in my practice is Rational Functional Tester, but since the Selenium is free, RFT is not. It is an eclipse based IDE which allow you to develop Java automation test scripts. Works fine with most of the browsers. There is a test recording feature as well, but I do not recommend it again. The benefit of RFT is that you do not need to start your project from scratch but you have a sample way of files and artifacts organization. There are some specifics in RFT which will cost you a time for investigation.
Other pretty easy and modern way of UI automation testing is Sikuli (http://sikuli.org/). That approach gives you an ability to search for patterns (images) on the screen, to perform actions and verifications on those patterns.
Of course much more important is how you organize your automation then what technology for automation you use. My suggestion is to start with the basic flows of your application and to cover the scenarios which take time for manual execution first. Prioritized your tests and start automation from the most important. Those which cover the significant business cases.