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Testing and software development are complex enough without your tools getting in the way. I’m particularly excited at how Test Studio’s R2 release kept a number of critical pieces of functionality crisp, clean, and simple while giving you great power to focus on essential portions of your quality program.


Performance Testing: Focusing on Critical Information
Perhaps the centerpiece of our R2 release is our new Performance Testing feature. You can now easily use any automated functional test to gather performance metrics on that specific slice of your application. You don’t need to change the test in any way, and you can continue using it as a functional test at the same time you’re gathering performance metrics on it.

I’ve used a number of performance tools in the past, and while I’m a bit biased about Test Studio, I’m extremely pleased with the experience users get when walking through a performance testing run with Test Studio! Too many other tools throw every option and metric at users, all at once. There’s no easy way to quickly discern the most important pieces of information about your test.

In contrast, Test Studio presents you a very clean, clear set of information, enabling you to quickly see where your potential areas of concern may be. Take the initial screen you see after a performance run, the Overview screen:

Each step is laid out with a clear, but not obnoxious, delineation between client and server timing. I’m a big fan of the concept of Minimum Discernable Difference for data: use the smallest possible color change between different pieces of data, otherwise your eyes get overloaded and weary.

Likewise, in the Details view for a specific step you initially see only the most important data at first: timing for all responses and requests making up that step.

Any Performance Monitor Counters you captured data for aren’t turned on initially; you can easily add them in as necessary by explicitly selecting them with a simple mouse click.

Our historical trend graph follows the same philosophy:

Test Studio’s Performance Test feature gets you all the information you need to do careful performance benchmarking and trending, and it lays it out for you in an easy to understand format.

Cut the Hassle of Managing Your Manual Tests

Managing manual test cases can quickly become a nightmare. I know, I’ve been there trying to deal with several thousand test cases held in Excel worksheets. We couldn’t effectively version our test cases, simultaneous editing of our test plan wasn’t possible, and test passes were a nightmare to execute and report on. Moreover, running each of those test cases often required an extensive amount of time getting the system set up prior to actually executing each test case.

Test Studio’s R2 release offers some great assistance in this area. You can import existing Excel-based test cases to Test Studio. From that point you’re able to easily update, execute, and report on your manual tests. Moreover, you can use our Fast Forward feature to automate portions of your test cases to save you time and hassle with prerequisite data.

For example, take an Excel-based test case for validating the visual appearance of a new user entry form. It might look something close to this:

In Test Studio I’m able to create a new Manual Test, then import the Excel test above into that test. The figure below shows an already imported test, plus the import dialog:

The problem with this test as written is I’m doing a lot of manual work logging on to the system and navigating – none of this is specific to the test I’m doing, and it wastes my time. Using the Fast Forward feature I can record steps to automate that work for me, or I can take advantage of an already written test and use that to do the work for me!

The figure below shows the same step above with a Fast Forward step included:

Now when you execute this test the browser will automatically work through the initial steps, placing you right where you want to be for this specific test. This feature is a big win for me—in the past I’ve had to write a lot of little Ruby, Selenium, or PowerShell scripts to do the same work for me. Now I can leverage other tests instead of writing new scripts!



Simplify Your Element Maintenance

Our Element Repository is a tremendous feature of Test Studio: all elements are defined in one central location, ensuring your tests don’t become brittle and high-maintenance.

The Repository Browser has gotten some slick updates for our R2 release. Now you’re able to toggle the scope of elements between the current test or your entire project. Additionally you’re able to quickly search the repository for specific elements as shown below:



R2: Simplicity Helping You Keep Focused

Software development and testing is hard enough. Your tools shouldn’t get in your way with confusing, hard-to-navigate features. Test Studio’s R2 release enables you to get your testing done more efficiently and thoroughly without crushing you with overly complex actions and UI.

About the author

Jim Holmes

Jim Holmes

has around 25 years IT experience. He is co-author of "Windows Developer Power Tools" and Chief Cat Herder of the CodeMash Conference. He's a blogger and evangelist for Telerik’s Test Studio, an awesome set of tools to help teams deliver better software. Find him as @aJimHolmes on Twitter.


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