Migrating Winrunner scripts to HP's QTP

Sometime in Q2 last year, my company asked me to evaluate what could be a painless migration program for moving our automation test repository into Quality Test Pro (QTP) from Winrunner which we had been using to generate tons of tests scripted across the various supply chain product. Personally to me, a WinRunner veteran, this came as a surprise and just the thought of the enormity of the effort and the costs we had invested over years to meticulously script, maintain and leverage these scripts to certify many a regression cycle shook us initially and more so when we discovered that the HP authorized partner vendor (WinQuick) were not of much help given the accuracy of migration they could promise and the prohibitive costs and time investments we would have had to make to get the old scripts working on QTP. I have been in similar POCs in the past with the most recent one being a migration of our configuration management system (From Borland's Star Team to IBM's Clear Quest and Clear Case), but the automation script migration effort was even trickier, not because we wanted, but just because Mercury was bought over by HP and they in turn decided to sunset WR and focus and consolidate the automated test market with the HP Quality Center which as a packaged solution offers automated software testing, governs QA processes and also can facilitate defect management. QTPsupports keyword and scripting interfaces and features a graphical user interface. It uses the Visual Basic Scripting Edition (VBScript) scripting language to specify a test procedure, and to manipulate the objects and controls of the application under test.


So, we are here today with much of a rewrite and reusing our data sheets in some places where the design allowed us. QTP is a simple to use tool which offers some flexibility but the costs associated and shortfalls the tool in its present form is worth a mention.

a. Descriptive programming in QTP is a pain

b. Improved runtime debugging support for VBS functional libraries was what i was expecting in an enhanced version of the QTP

c. Allow multiple QTP scripts to be open at the same time (like WinRunner having tabs). especially when i have modularized my scripts

d. More descriptive error messages rather than "Generic Error" message.

e. QTP running on a machine with Rational tools almost drains the memory of the box - QTP is certainly not a low resource hogger

f. Not capable of in-memory executions , which a highly priced automation solution of this generation should have provided

g. Support for asynchronous pages. HP could have surely provided a better support for Ajax. If the application had a way to put a wrapper around asynchronous calls so you could determine if the application is still waiting on an Ajax request, that would make testing Ajax web apps much easier.

h. HP should have put some more thought into making the interface to behave like an IDE. (Similar to the way visual Studio works)

i. Open API to call QTP from other tools (for example Visual Studio 2010).

j. There should have really been two types of licenses for QTP. One which can be used only for running the scripts/suites and second which is a superset, used for script development and execution both. Point is, I do not want to block my license for execution only and lose on the ROI on this investment. A developer/execution license set-up would be ideal. We, for example ended up buying many licenses which include the full GUI, but only need to be able to run remote tests. It seems like overkill to dedicate licenses just to run tests.

k. Provide better support for remote test execution. Quality Center could keep an inventory of enabled remote hosts (different from the current behavior today where it just does a scan of the LAN and gives a list of hosts). These hosts would probably have the remote agent running and would be accessible via IP address, not just machine name (making testing across subnets much easier). It would be a very client/server setup, where the clients register with the QC server. If the execution actually occurred through the QC server instead of through the QC client, that would also be nice (although this solution may not work for everyone depending on how your lab environment is configured). The QC server would then send all the remote execution requests to the remote hosts. The schedule would be kept on the QC server so a QC client connection would not be needed to initiate the remote runs.

So, despite all this we have embarked on our journey to migrate and migrate indeed to a state where we no longer intend to do mundane tests manually but leverage the power of QTP

Boredom - engagement of the imagination

I never knew as a four year old bubbly girl, my daughter Samiksha would come up to me and say "I am bored" and want to go to school. This is such a transformation from last summer, when my wife and I were short of having panic attacks, we were then actually goading and coaxing her to go to school and reasoning with her why children shouldn’t miss out on school and gave each other a high five each day after she boarded the school bus. Just when i had forgotten about this incident as an initial fear of a new place, i discovered the term Thaasiophobia - The fear of boredom. I was even surprised to read somewhere that this is common among the urban populace and can come in various forms -monotony, disinterest, torpor or simply apathy. Now this is not a simple thing to be dealt with as i have actually never dealt something like this. A similar complaint during my childhood days was promptly responded by "go read a book", "clean the car", ”go, play cricket” or "water the plants" or just run an errand. This probably led kids then to pick hobbies collect everything that was available -Stamps,Softdrink bottle caps, spinning tops, match labels, cigarette packs or do more creative things like building a scrap book of cricketing heroes or film stars for the more inclined or building models of automobiles and planes or get membership into a lending library. Talking of creativity, the first thing everyone talked about then ,was that of an "idle mind likened to the devil's workshop" and in the same breath cautioned that bored implied the mind being idle and degenerating (ugh!). Unlike most idle minds, Albert Einstein's was certainly more different. It is said that Einstein developed the theory of relativity when he was in a particularly bored state of mind (cool isn’t it, can’t even think what he could have done if he were to be any more focused)


Now, that still doesn’t explain whether bored people can be creative or creative folks get bored easily and either ways, it could be a good thing to get bored once in a while as long as it is a mere flagging of an interest and not lead to a longer lull or stagnation. My father -in-law, Dr C Sitaram (a renowned journalist) who has written an entire book on Schizophrenia, once casually told me the importance of being alone at least once during a day (This does not imply being lonely) and how this 'nothing time' helps to revisit memories and visualize dreams. I can tell you that it certainly does a lot of good to one’s temperament.and helps you feel your pulse.

Meanwhile, I am happy to see Samiksha talk to her toys and weave numerous make-believe stories around them and looking forward to the next birthday party of a friend and even more curious to know the theme of the party. I continue to spend my Saturday afternoons sitting in my balcony facing the swimming pool either reading or doing nothing. And being back in Eden (my balcony) doing nothing is not boring - It is peace!

Storytelling - An art,science or passion

As is the practice every evening, my daughter of 4 years asks me to narrate a bedtime story. I try hard to cook up a story each evening and must admit that i sometimes spend the commute back home from work thinking of one. The challenge however has been to think of a creative story all the time being careful about the message the story might leave on her young mind.
She loves listening to 'smart' stories which per her definition is when the central character in the story displays intelligence or presence of mind to tide over a situation to mark the logical end of a story.

I am already worried that her questions and inquisitiveness will very soon catch me on the wrong foot and my 24 years of tight rope education and grooming will look ordinary. I hope Google will rescue me like it has on numerous occasions. I also hope to never lose my patience and yell at her chiding her to study or go to bed.

The more i think about it, i only end up introspecting. I now realize i never studied anything expecting one day my daughter would come to me for answers. At least -so far she thinks her daddy knows and can do everything on the earth. All along i studied to pass exams, to beat someone or to ape another one. Introspecting today, i feel all the jargon and all that cutting edge stuff i learnt at various stages, sharpened and honed skills are of no use when i cannot engage her for 10 minutes with a captivating story..
Work pressures, meetings, time lines, managers, deliveries and reports all seem trivial when compared to this challenge that i am confronted these days. During my days at school, no one talked of 'Right brained' or 'Left brained' – One was either Brainy or woefully 'Bird Brained', This was around the time when Roger Sperry received a Nobel in medicine for this work on the roles of the left and right hemispheres of the brain viz. "creative and artistic" and "cognitively skilled" . Right brained pursuits are certainly acknowledged and sought after these days -probably the reason; many of my daughter's friends are into dance, art, music lessons at the age of 4!

Storytelling is helping my daughter learn to draw clearly from her own spoken narrative (not yet sure whether my stories are making an impact yet- My wife certainly has more time and patience). Storytelling surely is giving her ideas for expressing herself in a format which is clear, crisp and honest


....And as for me, i am on a mission to ensure my daughter turns out smarter and just about "right brained"