T-Plan Robot Documents > T-Plan Robot Enterprise v2 Tutorial

Is T-Plan Robot Enterprise a good choice for me?

The most important factor to realize is that since the tool is able to test anything on the graphical desktop, it will suffice for almost any black box GUI testing. Whether you test a GUI application, web application or a system component, the tool will work fine; it will just never provide the same level of features as an object oriented tool focusing on one particular application technology.

 T-Plan Robot Enterprise performs very well and is often one of the very few solutions in these situations:
  • Testing of a mixture of technologies. Do you need to test CLI, GUI and/or a web interface in one go? Does your application contain a technology or a feature which is not supported by other test tools? T-Plan Robot Enterprise is very likely to help you with it.
  • Testing on less common platforms. Whether your system under test runs Solaris, Linux, HP-UX or any other less frequent desktop OS, we support it as long as there's a VNC server for that platform.
  • Cross-platform testing. Do you need to connect to and automate on different platforms inside a single script? Would you like to design test scripts which would run across different systems? T-Plan Robot can do it - an individual component can be represented by an image collection rather than one single image and platform-dependent pieces of code (routines) may be implemented through libraries separately from the main test script.
  • Testing with images involved. Does your application display images or objects which are not recognized by the GUI component hierarchy in object oriented tools? Remember it's not a problem for T-Plan Robot.
  • Non-invasive testing is required. There are projects which require no installation of third party components on the tested system to eliminate any environment risks. As remote desktop technologies are in many cases supported natively by the OS, T-Plan Robot Enterprise is a good candidate. For example, on Linux you may enable VNC access to your default OS desktop. Mac OS on the other hand provides connection through ARD (Apple Remote Desktop) which is compatible with VNC. 
T-Plan Robot Enterprise is also suitable where:
  • Fast automation is needed (shorter test cycle). As you don't have to deal with the underlying technology and the application GUI structure, creation of automated test scripts is generally simpler and faster than with object oriented tools.
  • There's a lack of skilled QA staff. As the tool is easy lo learn and understand, it may be operated by a person with very limited programming background.
  • Extensive verification means are not required. A good example is localization (l10n) testing where the typical goal is to execute one or more test scripts against a single program and multiple language packs in order to produce a set of screen shots of the localized product. These may be later on sent to language experts to verify the translation quality. In such a case one doesn't really need the GUI component hierarchy to be involved.
  • The budget is limited. T-Plan Robot Enterprise is still a cheap solution compared to other tools and if you can even live with the free open source version, you don't have to pay a dime.
T-Plan Robot Enterprise should not be used where:
  • Full access to the GUI component tree is necessary. If you need to query and test hidden properties of GUI components, it is more appropriate to use an object oriented tool focusing on the particular programming platform.
  • Platform specific services are required. Since T-Plan Robot abstracts from the application technology, it will not allow you to exploit features of the underlying application platform.
  • Extra features such as file transfer or custom authentication scheme are needed. We can in general implement custom requirements but it takes time. Make sure to understand what T-Plan Robot can and can not do before you make the final decision and get in touch with our support when you need help.