Automating Automation: HP QC 10, HP QTP 10 and Automation Framework

Automating Automation book looks at HP Quality Center deployment, customization and also its integration with HP QTP. It includes in-depth discussion on the framework and the concrete examples will help both the beginners and experts to design a robust and reliable framework. Saurabh Chandra has explained the underlying principles with widely used testing tools — HP QC, HP QTP and Selenium, that would ensure its reach to QA testers. It reveals some complicated aspects of building an automation framework that bolsters individual elements together and proposes methodology for automation infrastructure. The book is well-organized, and there is no problem to find whatever you need to help you in your day-to-day automation activities. Instead of digging through posts on various forums, you have a very good chance of finding what you are looking for in minutes.

Techical Book Details:

Title: Automating Automation: QC 10, QTP 10 and Automation Framework
Authors: Saurabh Chandra
Pages: 480
Print ISBN 13: 978-1259027819 ; ISBN 10: 1259027813

Related books reviews and recommendations

• Best Books for HP QTP - Popular recommended books for HP QuickTest Professional

QTP tutorial for beginners

I want to provide the advice for beginners who want to learn QTP test automation tool. I will try to get you on the road to becoming HP QTP guru, starting with the basics and covering all of the core concepts you need to become vigorous in QuickTest Professional. I am aiming HP QTP tutorial at complete beginner who desires to learn test automation from the very beginning, software professional who needs rapidly expand QTP skills and QA Manager who eager to improve testing and coverage. I'll assume that you already have manual testing or some programming experience and know whats is HTML and DOM.

How did I get started with HP QTP? I was a manual tester and one day while looking for the testing solution I noticed a tool on a software testing market called HP QTP. I have decided to give a try by downloading QTP evaluation version and using it for several iterations on some public web site, lots of trials and errors, lots of experiments, than I brought the evaluation version to the office and presented to QA team members.

Step by step guide to learn QTP

Everyone wants to learn HP QTP and productively use this test automation tool, but not everyone knows how to begin the journey. The steps for learning HP QTP can be summarized as follows

• Start with a basics of Quality Assurance and Software Testing
• Learn when and why do you need to use test automation
• Learn basics of VBScript
• Download QTP demo version. The trial version is valid for 30 days, which should be enough to start
• Learn basic record and replay of scripts
• Implement some basic automation scripts
• Learn advanced QTP concepts by buying and studying one of the best QTP books, if needed.

QTP phone interview questions

QA Manager conducts phone interviews during a process of identifying and recruiting talented Test Automation Engineer. Properly organized telephone interview will help eliminate inexperienced candidates who had an amazing QA Resume, but used QTP only for for recording scripts and playback. Effective Test Manager would develop a set of formal phone QA/QTP interview questions and successfully reduce the pool of totally unqualified applicants, who will be invited for in-person QA interviews and minimize the expenses and time involved in interviewing on site.

General SQA interview questions - we do not want to hire former developer for QTP Tester position and would like to know how seasoned a candidate is

• What's the difference between black box testing and white box testing?
• What is Agile testing
• What responsibilities of a tester in Agile project
• What tests should be automated and should not be automated?

Windows QA interview questions - all testers have Windows experience on their resume, they should probably encountered with this problems on a daily basis or at least know where to get an answer.

• How do you find out all processes that are currently running?
• How could I transfer a file from Linux server to a Windows desktop?
• If you don't know how to do one of the above tasks, how would you find out?

SQL interview questions for testers - set of pretty lightweight questions for tester who has MS SQL, Oracle, MySQL on any other database in resume.

• There is a tools table with columns, id, name, evaluation, training, certification
• How do you select all records from the database table?
• Create SQL statement to select all records named “QTP”?
• How do you find all records with name “SilkTest, QTP or Selenium 2”?

Quick Test Professional interview questions - this is the last knowledge area to try. QA Manager should look for total vacuum in this or any other areas. Failing in any of area of knowledge, would mean that candidate will fail during on site interview.

• Define test automation requirements for developing web applicaiton?
• How to return the number of links in a web page with HP QTP?
• How to verify that a page is completely loaded using HP QTP?
• How to use HP QTP in Agile testing?

While conducting the phone interview QA Manager should do most of the talking, or at least the driving. Quality Assurance Manager should look for specific answers, and guide the interview along until he has got the answer or decided the candidate doesn't know the answer. By the end of the phone interview, QA Manager should have a clear picture of the candidate for QTP Tester position, the accuracy of QA Resume, and most importantly whether it's worth calling the candidate into the office for a face-to-face interview with the team.

QTP jobs

There are hundreds of QTP jobs listed on the internet everyday. QA Tester will find great number of positions offering amazing salaries for testers, outstanding benefits, great growth potentials and training by searching on Craigslist.com “QTP Tester” jobs, looking on Linkedin.com for “QTP Engineer” jobs. As expected, there is plenty of competition for these QTP jobs in the testing field. So, how does Quality Assurance Tester land one of those great HT Quick Test Professional testing jobs? Almost all recruiters and hiring managers state that everything boils down to technical and communication skills, but do you think that the knowledge of HP QTP enough to get hired? Let’s take a look on what additional skills and training is required from QA Engineer who wants to work as QTP Test Automation Tester.

I inspected QTP job postings in LinkedIn and Craigslist for Software QA Testers and Engineers indicating that knowledge of HP QTP is required. The job advertisements require knowledge of HP Quick Test Professional in the various forms:

• Experience in multiple web projects acting as a test automation lead for front end web testing using automation tools including HP Quick Test Pro (QTP);
• Proven experience of designing, building, maintaining a software test automation framework using HP Quick Test Pro (QTP);
• In-depth knowledge of QTP as well as experience in advanced automation frameworks including modular and keyword approaches;

Not surprisingly there are the number of QTP job posting mixing and matching several software testing tools. It sounds like these companies do not have yet any test automation in place yet or think that all test automation tools are look a like:

• Preferred experience with automated software testing tools for browser and server side testing (e.g. QTP, and Selenium);
• Proficient with web automation tools like Selenium, Watir, Silk, QTP, and/or WinRunner;
• Strong working knowledge one or more of the following software tools: SilkTest, QTP,
• Selenium, Watir, LoadRunner, SilkPerformer, JMeter, JUnit or similar tools as needed;

As expected the job requirement include additional skill and knowledge required from prospective candidate.

• Good knowledge of RDBMS such as Oracle, MS SQL Server or DB2
• Programming experience with in C, C++, JavaScript, Python, Perl, and/or XML
• Experience with Java, Oracle, Ajax, Rest/XML, Tomcat and Hudson is a plus

Here is what I discovered after checking several hundreds job postings. QTP QA engineer should posses the following technical skills in addition to QTP experience.

• coding skills - 100%
• HTML, JavaScript - 100%
• Windows - 100%
• Linux/Unix - 60%
• SQL (MS SQL, Oracle and MySQL) - 95%
• Microsoft .NET- 64%
• Java EE - 55%
• HTML 5 - 10%
• mobile testing - 19%
• PHP, Ruby, Perl -15%

Overall, whether you are just starting out as a QTP Tester, or you have several years of testing experience, the knowledge of only HP QuickTest pro is not enough. QA Engineer must have for sure programming skills and be ready to do configure Windows or Linux box, if needed.

Testing Android with QTP

There are QTP extensions allowing to automate mobile testing on Android and mobile applications. These plugins extend HP QTP 11, integrate into existing testing environment and can be used to build functional and regression test suites for Android testing on emulators and real devices.

SeeTest developed by Experitest is the software automation testing tool that allows to define test cases, export them to HP QTP and execute test cases in QuickTest Professional environment.

M-eux Test created by Jamo Solutions integrates completely into HP QTP 11 and let QA Tester to capture, verify and replay user interactions automatically for mobile applications.

Related book

1. Android Application Testing Guide - is a highly detailed book which gives step-by-step examples for a great variety of real-world case. If you are an Android QA Tester looking to test your applications, then this book is for you. No previous experience in mobile application testing is required.