MOBILE Application Automation

MOBILE Application –Automation Testing

Mobile application automation testing is the upcoming application domain with market leader in

software test automation HP QuickTest Professional partner with cutting-edge, innovative

companies Jamo Solutions, extending its functional testing capabilities to mobile application on

all commonly used operating systems and platforms.

Mobile application automation by QTP and M-eux

The M-eux Test tool integrates the HP QTP scripting environment onto the mobile device.

1.

The Add-in translates the commands to the Device Manager.

2.

scripting environment.

The Device Manager is the gateway between the Agent on the mobile device and the

3.

it passes the execution & recording results of the mobile device to the PC.

It passes the test commands initiated by QTP on the PC to the mobile device and viceversa

4.

The Agent is a program that is running on the device. The Agent will execute the test command

and will in case of recording, capture the action of the mobile device. The Agent contains the

GUI recognition functionality. Special care that the memory and CPU footprint of the Agent is

very low so that the Agent does not influence the good working of the device when replaying a

test script.

In M-eux test, the mobile device is connected to the device manager using a USB/WIFI

connection. During recording or replay of the script, the mobile devices need to be connected to

the Device Manager.

With this architecture M-eux Test extends the QTP scripting test environment onto mobile

devices and gives guaranteed Quality of Assurance (QA).

Supported features of QTP by M-eux Test.

M-eux test extends the QTP environment for mobile devices, resulting in support of following

features:

An execution report is generated which indicates success or failure.

Document prepared by- V Prashanth

• Recording from real actual device or emulator

• Replay on real actual device or emulator

• Support for object repository

• Recognition of standard GUI elements and the HTML elements in the mobile browser

• GUI learn functionality

• GUI class mapping functionality for customized objects

• Extended support for VM-based languages like .Net

• Support for active screen technology

• Bitmap Verification

Meux – Automation Tool for Mobile Devices

Meux tool by Jamo Solutions available at

http://www.jamosolutions.com/documents/downloadproduct.php is an add-in to QTP that records and

plays back automation scripts on a mobile application just as it would on a regular desktop application. A

pre requisite of having the Meux agent installed on the device and the QTP Add In installed on QTP

machine is required. Both of these are available as a part of the installation package. The Meux Device

Manager acts as the bridge between the add in and the agent. The installation and set up would require

some extra technical expertise with port numbers being used by the agent clashing with the the port

numbers already in use on the machine.

After the initial hiccups of setting up, I was highly thrilled to try out the application and see how useful it

can be in my mobile automation tasks. Currently it supports only Windows Mobile, Blackberry RIM OS

and Android OS with the limitations on the versions of the same. Recording on mobile application is

almost as simple as on a desktop application. However the details and the excellence of the same can be

debated upon. Meux tool does not support any customization of the Mobile OS which is very common

on all the Windows Mobile Devices by HTC. As a workaround many function calls have been provided.

But I am pretty concerned with the re usability of scripts across same OS on different devices or

different version of the OS. With my concentration mainly on browser testing, I wasn’t highly impressed

with the same.

The tool does not support many of the native functions on the mobile browser which are found on the

regular browser. The browser and page objects have very limited number of native inbuilt

functioanilities and much is left to the discretion of the coder. For instance, the GetChildObjects method

found on a regular browser is absent on the mobile browsers inbuilt functionalities. This pretty much

defeats the purpose of descriptive programming. To verify the presence of certain web object, you

would have to get an array collection of all the objects on the page and then parse through each of them

to find what you are looking for. This is not the most effective way of working on a highly dynamic page

with high number of objects. Also, the object spy does not work on the mobile browser.

The analysis of the tool can be summarized through the following SWOT analysis of the same.

Document prepared by- V Prashanth

Strengths :

• Works as a bridge in between QTP Automation Tool and Mobile Device

• Records and Plays back automation scripts on mobile devices

Weaknesses:

• Does not support many important native functionalities of the web browser

• Does not support any customizations on the OS

• Object Spy does not work

Opportunities:

• Can re run same script across multiple devices with the same OS

• Can replace manual QA

Threats:

• Supports limited versions of the OS

• No agent for iPhones as yet

• Can behave highly unexpected at times

Having tried this, for the time being I would still continue using our current options viz. DeviceAnywhere

and Perfecto Mobile from Nexperience. Perfecto Mobile provides automation scripting across various

devices and platforms with a high level of re usability. But having said that, I am going to keep a keen

eye on the development progress of Meux with heavy interest considering its excellent potential.

Another thing that I would like point out here is the excellent support from the Meux team especially by

Jacques Wouters. In spite of being on different sides of the Atlantic and having a disastrous time

difference, the support team made sure they were available when we needed it.

Quick Test Professional

Jamo Solutions did not create its own scripting tool. Instead, the product M-eux Test extends existing

well known tools so that the QA-engineer can re-use his experience and is not locked into a specific

environment.

Quick Test Professional (QTP) is a world leading test environment developed by HP. QTP is an

advanced, automated testing software for building functional and regression test suites. The test script

is key word driven. The tool captures, verifies and replays user interactions automatically for PC based

applications. It's execution reports helps the testers quickly identify and report on application defects,

while providing advanced functionality for tester collaboration. M-eux Test integrates fully into

QuickTest professional so that the tester can use the above described functionality for testing mobile

applications.

Document prepared by- V Prashanth

Best practice and additional information on QTP can be found

M-eux integrates completely into QuickTest Professional. The object repository is used to store the UI

elements of the mobile application. Statements can be recorded or programmed. Objects can be be

highlighted in the Remote Device Screen window and verification points can be created against the

attributes of the UI element or against the bitmap of the UI elements. Also the activte screen

functionalty of QuickTest professional is supported.

The following figure is a snapshot of the object repository containing ui elements definitions of an

Android device.

The script in key word view looks like is illustrated by following figure:

here.

Document prepared by- V Prashanth

Tool architecture

The architecture for mobile application testing is shown in the following figure.

The agent is a program that is running on the mobile device or inside the emulator. The agent executes

the test command and will in case of recording, capture the action on the mobile device. The agent

contains

CPU footprint of the agent is very low so that the Agent does not influence the good working of the

device when replaying a test script.

the GUI recognition functionality. Jamo Solutions did take special care that the memory and

Document prepared by- V Prashanth

The agent is not communicating directly with QuickTest Professional. The communication is routed

through the device manager program. Both QuickTest Professional and the device manager program are

running on the PC.

The device that runs the agent is connected to the PC using either WIFI or USB connection.

Overview license mechanism of M-eux Test

Jamo Solutions offers different license formulas. These are:

• A seat license locked to the PC

• A site license is a network based license whereby PC’s connected to a central license server

program, can run M-eux test. The customer can define the number of licenses needed.

Overview standard/professional edition of M-eux Test

M-eux can be purchased in two editions: a standard edition and the professional edition.

The standard edition contains all functionality to create, maintain and execute the automated test

script.

The professional edition contains al functionality of the standard edition and includes also the Wan

connector for remote execution of test cases, the test case scheduler and access to all scripting

environments.

M-eux Test editions:

Document prepared by- V Prashanth

Document prepared by- V Prashanth