T-Plan Robot Frequently Asked Questions
Projects
T-Plan Robot Projects
T-Plan Robot is available in two forms as follows:
- T-Plan Robot Enterprise is a commercial and actively developed product, with support and custom development / plugin services.
- T-Plan Robot Open Source is a legacy open source version with limited functionality. There is no support and no active development.
View the T-Plan Robot Enterprise Documentation Guide for details on the latest enterprise release.
Together with the comparison analysis listed in the table below, let us first describe some of the main differences between the 2 projects:
- New image search algorithms, are not available in the open source tool.
Please view an overview of the new image search here: New Search Algorithm.
The new search algorithms not only improve accuracy, speed performance etc. but also importantly are the only way to recognise images where background and resolution tolerance are a factor (E.g. Flash, Silverlight etc.).
The new searches are incredible, and vastly improve your testing in terms of time, effort and therefore ultimately cost. - Fixes to resource drain and over memory usage. Whilst the open source tool is fine for a 1 test / 1 machine scenario, when employed in a test environment with multiple test executions and machines; resource limits are quickly met.
All these issues have been fixed in the Enterprise version, and in test instances we have seen a 90% improvement in resource consumption and memory usage etc. - With the above 2 points.. comes vast time savings… and therefore cost savings!
Recent tests compared the very slow time to execute tests using the open source project, with the lightning speed of the Enterprise version.
A summary of the results can be seen in the slideshow opposite…
Note: (‘search’ = open source | ‘search2′ = enterprise).
| Highlights | T-Plan Robot Enterprise | T-Plan Robot Open Source |
| License | T-Plan License[1] | GPL v2.0 & higher |
| Price | On request[2] | Free |
| Downloads | On request[3] | Via SourceForge |
| Unlimited online support via forums, email & phone |  |
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| Custom builds with bug fixes and minor features | |
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| Customization and development of features on request | |
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| Free upgrades | |
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Features |
Robot Enterprise | Open Source |
| New Service Manager A new Service manager allowing management of Robot running as a Windows system service (since 4.3 read more) | |
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| Remote Desktop Support over RDP Protocol Robot hosted on MS Windows can automate any other system running an RDP server such as MS Windows (via Terminal Services), Mac or Unix/Linux. It can also drive any VirtualBox guest system (virtual machine). (since 4.3 read more) | |
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| Robot Automation Portal (RAP) Support of the Robot Automation Portal (RAP). The RAP is web application allowing the monitoring and management of T-Plan Robot Enterprise driven automation over the TCP/IP network, (internet and/or intranet) from a web browser (since 4.2.1 read more) | |
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| Click & Drag Command Enhancements Click and Drag command enhancements | |
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| REST Based T-Plan Professional Integration Flexible integration with T-Plan Professional 8.1 relying on a REST web service (since 4.2, read more) | |
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| Android Connection with Screen Mirroring Automate Android devices over ADB with fast screen transfer (since 4.2, read more) | |
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| iOS Over Xcode Full iOS device control from a Mac with Xcode installation (since 4.2, read more) | |
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| Connection Manager Manage your test environment connections easily (since 4.2, read more) | |
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| Local Desktop on Multi Display Environments Employ the Local Desktop connection on environments with multiple screens (read more) | |
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| Local Desktop Recording on Mac and Linux Record test scripts on single Mac OS or Linux environments (read more) | |
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| iOS Mirror over the Lightning USB Fast and reliable automation of iOS devices from Mac OS X (read more) | |
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| Image Based Script Recorder Record reliable test scripts on the fly (read more) | |
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| Search for Scaled Components Search for scaled components on the desktop (read more) | |
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| Detached Desktop View Display the desktop view in a separate window (read more) | |
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| Scheduler Support of script scheduling and schedule reporting (read more) | |
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| Advanced Optical Character Recognition (OCR) Image Filter & OCR Mode Parameter features introduced for OCR engine (read more) | |
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| Remote Control Control executing test scripts over the web or from 3rd party apps (read more) | |
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| Image Doctor Resolve image comparison failures without having to stop the script (read more) | |
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| Desktop Scaling Scale the desktop view to fit your own resolution | |
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| Testing of iOS Devices Over the AirPlay Mirror and VNC or T-Plan Server OpenGL support for Game etc. testing of iOS devices (iPhone, iPad) using AirPlay Screen Mirroring and the VNC or T-Plan server (read more) | |
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| Local Desktop Testing Testing of applications and system components on the local desktop (read more) | |
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| Testing of Non-Rooted Android Mobile Devices Over USB Testing of non-rooted Android devices via the Android Debug Bridge (ADB) over the USB cable (read more) | |
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| New ‘Enterprise Image Search v2’ New algorithm enables Robot to identify components on the screen with a high level of tolerance to minor rendering changes, experienced for example with Flash. (read more) | |
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| New ‘Image Based Text Recognition’ New algorithm recognizes text on the screen based on pre-saved character images (read more) | |
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| Enhanced Script Execution Visualization of the performed mouse and image comparison operations | |
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| Easy Investigation of Script Failures The Execution Log now captures a complete history of the script execution (read more) | |
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| New ‘Command Properties Window’ All test script commands can be easily designed and updated via the new interactive components | |
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| Redesigned ‘Code Template Wizard’ Offers a wide library of code templates both for the TPR and Java formats | |
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| Redesigned ‘Command Wizard’ Allows easy inuitive interactive design of test script commands | |
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| New ‘Java Convertor’ Enables easy and reliable conversion of TPR test scripts (*.tpr) into Java. (read more) | |
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| Use of a JavaIDE Projects are structure compatible with e.g. Netbeans or Eclipse, for Java development | |
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| Full support of Java Test Scripts Java code is compiled and executed on the fl y | |
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| Project Level Organisation Test Scripts, Test Data, Component Images and Test Results. (read more) | |
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| New Look & Feel (LAF) Plus support of an extra 15 optional LAF schemes | |
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| Export to T-Plan Professional Import automated testing results to T-Plan test management database (read more) | |
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| Import from T-Plan Professional Create test script templates from T-Plan data (read more) | |
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| Record & Replay Allows to record interaction with an application (desktop) to a test script (read more) | |
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| Result Manager GUI component for comfortable viewing & editing of test results (read more) | |
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| Customizable XML reports Displayable XML reports through a built-in or custom XSL (read more, see a sample XML report) | |
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| Test result XML Allows to export results from automated testing to third party applications (read more) | |
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| Structured test results Support of structured test results consisting of test cases and steps | |
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| HTML reports Reports with test results and screenshots (read more, see a sample report) | |
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| Text file, CSV and MS Excel I/O Reading from and writing to plain text files, CSVs and MS Excel documents (read more) | |
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| Screen shots with image search results Ability to highlight objects located through image search in screen shots (read more) | |
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| Component Capture User friendly GUI feature allowing to capture a component image and apply a custom action (read more) | |
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| Object search Ability to analyze image scene and locate objects by color or by a color range (read more) | |
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| Optimization for testing of Flash applications RGB tolerant image search dealing with specific Flash image rendering (read more) | |
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| Image search with background detection Improved image search able to locate objects on various backgrounds (read more) | |
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| Optimized image search Improved algorithm delivering up to 55% faster search than the v1.x open source version | |
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| Image collections and meta data Support of named image collections (directories) and image meta data | |
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| Basic image comparison capabilities Ability to perform image comparison and locate a template image on the screen (read more) | |
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| Optical Character Recognition (OCR) Support of third party OCR engine(s) (Tesseract) | |
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| Automation of mobile devices Automated testing of mobile devices (see requirements) | |
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| Static image testing Support of static image testing through the Image Client (read more) | |
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| Advanced RFB features Support of RFB v3.7 and 3.8 and pseudo cursor encoding | |
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| Support of VNC (RFB) Ability to test over the RFB v3.3 protocol (see supported environments) | |
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| Support of Java libraries Ability to instantiate and execute Java test classes from regular scripts (read more) | |
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| Hybrid test scripts Ability to execute Java source code snippets embedded into regular scripts (read more) | |
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| Java test scripts Support of test scripts written in Java (read more) | |
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| Scripting language Easy to understand language for automated test scripts (see the spec) | |
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| Update & Upgrade Comfortable & secure online software update (read more) | |
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| Mac OS X application format Release in form of Mac OS X application | |
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| Windows installer Comfortable Windows managed installation | |
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| Performance testing support Support of timers and reference performance data (read more) | |
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| Load testing support Parallel testing supported through a multi threaded Java API (read more) | |
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| Platform independence Runs on all platforms supported by Java (see environment spec) | |
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| Generic black box testing Image based automated testing of any desktop application (read more) | |
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[1]See our licensing FAQ’s for details.
[2]Pricing for individual countries is available on request through our contacts form. See our licensing FAQ’s for details.
[3]Already registered customers may download the product through our T-Plan Robot Enterprise Releases Support Forum. A valid software license key is required to run the tool. To request a web based product presentation or a trial version of T-Plan Robot Enterprise or other T-Plan products use our contacts form.