How to make the Automation go faster?

[Top Gun]

We recently presented Test Studio to the QA team as a solution for automated testing on a Silverlight application.  One of the concerns from the QA team was that the play back was slow. With slow automation their tests would take a long time to complete.  Is there a way to make the automation play back faster?

[Byron]

Hello Top Gun,

Thanks for trying Test Studio. In general, Test Studio will execute tests as quickly as possible. There are some settings that may be in place that slow down execution, however. For example, if your test contains Execution Delays, you may want to replace them with Wait For steps, which will complete as soon as the condition is met, rather than waiting out the fixed execution delay period.

Text entry steps in a Silverlight test have their SimulateRealUser property set to True by default. You can either:

• Set that property to False, since it slows down execution. Warning: this may adversely affect your test, as Silverlight apps typically require simulated real typing to behave correctly.
• Leave the property at True, but decrease the KeyHoldTime and TimeBetweenKeypresses properties for text entry steps(see screen shot). This decreases the overall time taken to type the text.

Unfortunately there is no Project- or Test-level setting to change those properties all at once for multiple steps. They must be changed on each step.

If tests are executed over Remote Desktop, try decreasing the color depth of the remote session. 

Regards,
Byron
the Telerik team

[Top Gun]

Thanks for the reply.  For my step, I did not have the properties KeyHoldTime or TimeBetweenKeyPresses (See Attached).  I am not sure why.  I did have a property called KeyPressTime.  I decreased the value from 10 to 1. This did not make a big difference.  I may try setting SimulateRealUser to false.

[Byron]

Hi Top Gun,

In this case, the KeyHoldTime and TimeBetweenKeyPresses properties are not available for the translator for the RadControl against which you are recording your test. To work around this, I recommend taking the following steps:

1. Disable the translator in your project settings. In the project tab, open the Project Settings dialog by clicking the 'Show' icon in the Settings section of the ribbon menu. Under the Translators page of the Project Settings, open the Silverlight tab. From the list of translators, deselect the translator for your control. In this case, the control is a RadMaskedInput for Xaml (see attached screenshot).
2. Rerecord the steps against the element. This will add a standard textbox element to the element repository for your test. You can repeat this for all steps against the control or build new steps using the Step Suggestions feature of the element repository.
3. Modify the properties for the new elements. The standard Silverlight textbox element will contain the KeyHoldTime and TimeBetweenKeypresses properties.

Please let us know if we can assist you further.

Kind regards,
Byron
the Telerik team

[Top Gun]

Thanks for the reply.  I disabled the translator for the RadMaskedInput and RadMaskedTextBox.  I re recorded my tests.  When I ran my tests, the automation moved about the same speed.  I did not notice any increase in automation speed.  The step suggestions you mentioned seems interesting.  However, I did not play around with that.

[Byron]

Hi Amrit,

Beyond the initial suggestions, you should know that test list execution is almost twice as fast as Quick Execution. For repeated and scheduled tests, this speeds up execution time. Please let us know if we can assist you further.

All the best,
Byron
the Telerik team

[Top Gun]

Thank you.  I appreciate the help.  I will try that.