UFT A Sneak Peek at Unified Functional Testing 12.5

Hands down, the most exciting announcement made at this year's HP Discover this year for me was LeanFT, but that's not the only thing HP has been working on.

If you're a Unified Functional Tester user, HP has made some significant improvements to UFT as well.

UFT 12.5 Highlights

The five main areas in which functionality has been added to or enhanced with UFT 12.5 are:

• Cross-Browser Testing
  
• Mobile
  
• Integrations & Technologies
  
• Usability
  
• Flexible Consumption
  

Cross-Browser Testing

HP has enhanced the Chrome recording ability and made it easier to create test scripts for cross-browser tests. This update should allow us to use one script that works against all four browsers: IE, Chrome, Firefox and Safari.

They've also added a way for users to easily specify which browser to run against and to receive a single report that shows the results of all the test executions against all the different browsers. Way cool!

Flexible Consumption

This new feature is pretty wild. HP has separated all the code needed for UFT execution to create what they are calling a UFT Runtime Engine. This is a separate installation piece now, which allows users to easily deploy test scripts to other machines. It also includes a new license type, which offers users lower-priced license options for machines on which they just need to execute scripts.

When you buy the UFT bundle you're getting both the UFT and LeanFT licenses. (This applies if you already have an existing Unified Functional Testing license.) You get to decide which flavor you want to use to create your test scripts. You can mix and match. You can also install both UFT and LeanFT on the same machine.

Mix and match licenses as you please; companies that have lots of licenses but still need more don't need to buy UFT if they don't need a full-blown solution. You can buy just the lower-cost LeanFT license, or even just a runtime engine license. This flexibility in the different licenses allows you to get only the functionality you really need, and will hopefully save you some money.

Since it hasn't been released yet, I'm not sure what the cost difference will be between the different license options, but it sounds like it will be a considerable difference.

Can you convert a UFT script to a LeanFT script?

Someone in the UFT 12.5 session asked the question, “Can you convert the UFT script to a LeanFT script?” The answer was that the UFT object repository will be compatible with LeanFT, but that you'll need to manually recreate your scripts in LeanFT.

I also saw a demo of a conversion tool that Gallop software (an HP partner) has created that looked pretty slick, but I'm not sure how well it works as of yet.

In any case, the only reason you should move from UFT to LeanFT is to take advantage of the Object Oriented Features of Java and C#. I can't see many scenarios where you would want to convert your existing UFT scripts over without rewriting them specifically to take advantage of Java or C#.

Usability

I haven't seen the new IDE UI, but I've heard it got a little facelift that's supposed to make it easier to use. There have also been some keyword view enhancements which I never use, but maybe some of you do. It sounds like the biggest change here was the new, lightweight, HTML-based report feature. Now you can share results without your team members without them needing to have Results Viewer installed on their machine. This should make sharing info among your non-automation team members quicker and easier.

Integration & Technologies

With more and more companies moving to continuous delivery and integration, it was difficult before now to get UFT to fit into this new workflow. Thankfully, UFT 12.5 HP has added functionality that allows users to integrate with source-control tools like Git and Subversion. (This had been a long-standing hassle for me, since the only tool I could use for version control was ALM, which made it difficult to integrate our automation scripts with our Continuous Integration environment.)

Mobile

UFT 12.5 will integrate better with HP Mobile Solution. There have also been some improvements around this for designing mobile tests, using the spy and highlighting within UFT. Now you can use the UFT SPY and highlight on mobile user interfaces. There is also a run mobile test option using UFT Jenkins plugin.

What else?

That's everything worth noting from the HP Discover UFT session. When UFT 12.5 is officially released, I'll try to update anything I missed or got wrong.

To sum it all up, it looks like HP is trying to create different licenses and flavors of their products to meet the requirements of a variety of users. I think many of these changes have come a little late, but I'm happy they're finally here.