By Sandhya Sapru

The Quality Center 10.0 was launched on 14th January 2009 and came into the market finally from Jan 30th, 2009

The new Version 10 is an absolute milestone not only for tests managers. It also makes life easier for Testers, for R&D persons, Test Managers, as well as QC System administrators. The new functions have been anticipated for quite some time and have been implemented in the new product in a well-conceived manner.

•    Editions Of QC 10.0

1.    QC Starter Edition: This Edition is for small teams , managing small teams.

2.    QC Enterprise: Targeted at Mainstream QA Organization that are involved in managing medium to large Releases and are having new capabilities.

3.    QC Premier Edition: Mainly for Large and mature Organization who have either or implemented COE (Center Of Excellence) in their Organization and who are managing enterprise releases.

•    Versioning:-
Initially there were change related problems that the QA people had to face like
1. Frequent changes in Requirements and tests…
2. Repeated copying of Project related assets leads to chaos.
3. There is lack of visibility when priorities change.
For that matter Versioning concept has been introduced in QC 10.0 to improve the chaos, improve the change related problems to Requirements, Tests and Components.
In this manner, the people involved will have latest information related to the Project and there is no need to purchase third party version tools as well as data integrity can be maintained across projects.

•    Baselining:
Capture project related information or assets at key point of time to make it clear what was agreed to and what was delivered. If any problem happens at any particular version of the project baselining helps   you to go to the previous version or rollbacks to previous version of the project assets and also helps in to sign off when a particular milestone is reached.

•    Integrated Dashboard :
Initially in previous version of Quality Center the Dashboard has to be installed separately. It had separate database, complex and hard to use.

Quality Center 10.0 includes a role based Dashboard which enables a QA Manager, R&D Manager, Business analyst and Team Lead to create their personalized Dashboard. This Dashboard is for a single project and replaces the dashboard of previous versions. It is now finally possible, when working on a QC project, to get an overview of all of one’s ongoing projects. These dashboards are freely configurable and can be designated to be personal favorites or publicly accessible. Special Excel reports also enable direct access to the database via SQL. The generated reports can then be graphically processed at the same time by means of VBScript
Helps in Real time progress and status reporting with focus on individual stakeholders in effective release decisions and there is no need to manage Servers.
No linkage between legacy Dashboard and new Dashboard of QC 10.0.

•    Enhanced Risk Based Quality Management with Testing effort:

The QC 10.0 has a strategic test plan that helps to identify the Testing Effort of a particular Requirement of a particular Business Risk. This helps to accurately plan the project deliverables and how much testing effort should be put on Requirement of a particular level.

•    Shared Libraries or Library Management: Sharing tests , requirements and components:– With QC 10.0 a Shared Library can be created for requirements , Tests and Components, can be re-used and distributed

A library represents a collection of entities in a QC project, including their relationships to each other. When dealing with many similar projects, it offers the advantage of not having to repeatedly create entities. Libraries can be imported from project A into project B, compared against each other, or even synchronized. A library also allows one to collect the same entities as in versioning. With Quality Center Premier Edition, Defects are not included, but they can be shared with the new “HP Quality Center Synchronizer” manually among several QC projects.

•    Cross Project Customization

Many organizations have defined standards, such as a uniform defect status field or a standardized priority scale, for their software quality-related areas. However, these fields and lists were often changed or even deleted by QC project administrators. Some companies have even gone to great lengths in using their own programming to define a template that can be distributed to all QC projects, thereby establishing a uniform standard.

Site Administrator now provides a way to link projects with a template. If the template is changed, the data can then be passed on later at the right point in time. This function has been awaited not only by test managers who like to have the same configuration in all their projects, but especially also by the respective operators of QC installations, namely the system administrators. Cross Project Customization is also only available in the Premier Edition.

By Sandhya Sapru

You can use the QuickTest Professional automation object model to automate your QuickTest operations. Using the objects, methods, and properties exposed by the QuickTest automation object model, you can write scripts that configure QuickTest options and run tests or components instead of performing these operations manually using the QuickTest interface.

Automation scripts are especially useful for performing the same tasks multiple times or on multiple tests or components, or quickly configuring QuickTest according to your needs for a particular environment or application.

An object model is a structural representation of software objects (classes) that comprise the implementation of a system or application. An object model defines a set of classes and interfaces, together with their properties, methods and events, and their relationships.

Essentially all configuration and run functionality provided via the QuickTest interface is in some way represented in the QuickTest automation object model via objects, methods, and properties.

A one-on-one comparison cannot always be made, most dialog boxes in QuickTest have a corresponding automation object, most options in dialog boxes can be set and/or retrieved using the corresponding object property, and most menu commands and other operations have corresponding automation methods.

You can use the objects, methods, and properties exposed by the QuickTest automation object model, along with standard programming elements such as loops and conditional statements to design your script.

Automation scripts are especially useful for performing the same tasks multiple times or on multiple tests or components, or quickly configuring QuickTest according to your needs for a particular environment or application.

For example, you can create and run an automation script from a VBS file  that loads the required add-ins for a test or component, starts QuickTest in visible mode, opens the test or component, configures settings that correspond to those in the Options, Test or Business Component Settings, and Record and Run Settings dialog boxes, runs the test or component, and saves the test or component.
You can then add a simple loop to your script so that your single script can perform the operations described above for multiple tests or components.

You can also create an initialization script that opens QuickTest with specific configuration settings. You can then instruct all of your testers to open QuickTest using this automation script to ensure that all of your testers are always working with the same configuration.

Description
The QuickTest automation object model exposes the objects You can use these objects, and their associated methods and properties, to write  programs that automatically configure QuickTest options and run tests.

Let  us have an example on Automation Object Model where in we can :–
Launch a QTP through vbs file,
Associate the required Repositories,
Save your Test and finally
Quit

‘Create a file with any name say  Main.vbs
Dim qtApp  ‘Create a variable to store the address of  a QuickTest  Application
Dim strPath
”””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””’
Set qtApp = CreateObject(”QuickTest.Application”)
qtApp.Launch                      ‘Launch method launches QTP Application
qtApp.Visible = True                  ‘You can make the QTP Application visible

””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””’
‘Now set the path where you can locate your scripts
strPath = qtApp.Folders.Locate(”C:\Documents and Settings\ssapru\My Documents\QACAMPUSBLOG\scripts”) ‘
If qtApp.Folders.Find(strPath) = -1 Then
qtApp.Folders.Add strPath, 1
End If

”””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””’
‘To   associate  your repositories with the test.
Set qtRepositories = qtApp.Test.Actions(”Action1″).ObjectRepositories
qtRepositories.Add    “C:\Documents and Settings\ssapru\My Documents\QACAMPUSBLOG\repositories\Repository1.tsr”, 1

””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””
‘ To create a new Test  in the QTP
qtApp.New
‘To save the test if it is not already created..
If qtApp.Test.Modified  Then
If qtApp.Test.IsNew Then
qtApp.Test.SaveAs “C:\Documents and Settings\ssapru\My Documents\QACAMPUSBLOG\scripts\ss2″
else
qtApp.Test.  Save
End If
End If
‘ If the current opened Test isnot new..

If  Not  qtApp.Test.IsNew  Then                            ‘ If the current test is not new
qtApp.New                                                           ‘ Open a new test
End If
””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””
‘Deallocate memory
”””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””
qtApp.Quit                                                   Quit QuickTest
Set qtRepositories = Nothing                      ‘ Release the action’s shared repositories collection
Set qtApp = Nothing