Apr
24
Written by:
Danny R. Faught
Friday, April 24, 2009 10:58 AM
I'm playing with two Java-based performance test tools (TestMaker and The Grinder), and I'm reminded how annoyed I tend to get trying to use desktop applications that are developed in Java. Shortly after I complained that it seemed that performance test tools only work on Windows, I look at these two that can run on many different platforms because they're Java-based. So I was excited to give them a try.
I ran TestMaker on my Mac. Then it told me that some unspecified features wouldn't work unless I upgrade Java to a version that is not yet available on Mac OS. Because I'm not familiar with the tool, I won't know whether any problems I encounter will be because I don't know how it works, or because it's not working.
At least TestMaker comes with a script that makes it easy to launch. Playing with The Grinder on Windows today, I had to go to the command line and try to set up a classpath, wondering whether to use a Windows or Unix-style file path, and wondering whether it would work with a space in the path. It seemed to be working yesterday, but I still don't have it working correctly today. I'm sure that part of the problem is that I'm still climbing the learning curve - though my experience in the past has been that I tend to forget which hoops I'm supposed to jump through for Java even after I master it once.
Keep in mind that I'm an incurable command line jockey. When I'm doing some hacking, I really want the flexibility of the command line. Even so, I'd prefer to have tools that I can launch simply by typing in its name or double-clicking.
I will continue to groan every time I come across a Java desktop application, because the odds are I'll be disappointed that it won't live up to my hopes. Once I get that out of my system, I'll push on, because there could be something really useful in there somewhere.
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3 comment(s) so far...
Re: Lamenting Java-based test tools
You can try out another java based testing tool called Twist from Thoughtworks
studios.thoughtworks.com/twist-agile-test-automation
By Radhakrishnan on
Monday, April 27, 2009 1:00 AM
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Re: Lamenting Java-based test tools
You should check out Robot Framework (code.google.com/p/robotframework/). It is written in Python, so double-click or command line usage is much simpler than Java. However, it has the concept of plug-in test libraries which can be written in Java and used to test Java applications. We've been using it for the past 6 months at TI to test our TI-Nspire™ product line.
By Martin Taylor on
Monday, May 04, 2009 5:57 AM
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Re: Lamenting Java-based test tools
While watching google i/o recently, they mentioned WebDriver, theu used it to test Wave and it looked to work great in the demo code.google.com/p/webdriver/
By boardtc on
Thursday, June 11, 2009 10:18 AM
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