The future of QuickTest Pro

HP just gave a revealing presentation about the next version of QuickTest Pro. It is codenamed Atlantis, and it will probably be called QuickTest Pro 10.0. QTP 10 is targeted to be released in the beginning of 2009.

I’ll break down some of the features that were discussed.

IDE Improvements

  • Adding a TODO pane populated by comments prefixed with TODO: .  This is similar to what Test Design Studio and many other IDEs do.
  • Dynamic Surrounding - I’m unsure about this feature, as I haven’t heard the term Dynamic Surrounding before.  The presenter indicated that it basically meant auto indenting code within If statements and loops, but QTP’s IDE already does that, so I must have misunderstood.  Maybe this is something like the surround snippets in Test Design Studio.  HP would do well to include something like that in QTP.
  • IntelliSense Improvements - three areas where IntelliSense will be improved
    • Adding second-level IntelliSense — example given was if an objects property is also an object, then IntelliSense will be provided for that object as well.
    • Inner Object IntelliSense.  So you won’t lose IntelliSense after you type WebEdit().Object
    • Com object IntelliSense.  IntelliSense will be provided for any COM object defined with createobject()
  • Toolbar Customization - You will be able to customize the toolbar to include buttons for launching various other applications.  I think this may be something along the lines of Test Design Studio’s external functions.

Report Improvements

  • Export reports to PDF and Doc files
  • Define standard report formats
  • Embed your own images and screenshots in reports
  • Jump to a script line in QTP from a report

Quality Center

I’m not a Quality Center user, so I don’t know what some of these features mean.  I’m just transcribing them for those of you who do.

The presenter said that Quality Center Integration is the main area of focus for Atlantis.  QC Atlantis will release at the same time as QTP Atlantis.

  • External Resources Module in QC. Allows you to manage QC integrations.
    QC will understand what the assets of QTP tests are and how to manage them
  • Use QC’s internal versioning to version tests and assets
  • Comparison tool, compare QTP tests and assets to choose which one to use
  • Add sharing of assets between projects
  • Manage QC from within QTP
  • From with QTP, open a specific QC asset, including specifying the revision from QCs version control
  • When you open an asset in QTP, it will automatically be checked out from QC