Plex 2E

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  • 1.  Testing Tools

    Posted Feb 23, 2010 10:07 PM
    Good Morning  I would like to know what other companies use when it comes to testing? Just a bit of back ground. We are busy with a project by re-writting our Production system. We are doing this in PLEX generating WinC for the client functions and RPGIV for the back end.  We have a dedidicated resource that will be responsible for the testing of the application as we go on in the development life cycle.  What we are looking for is a tool that we can use to do automated testing. i.e. it should be able to take different data sets (According to different scenarios) and run it through a application (GUI, client functions and back end functions) The tool should be generic and independant of a programming language..  Some of my colleagues wnet to the US 2/3 years ago and they had a look at a company "Rollins" which uses "Compuware Testpartner" we are investigating this. But I would like to hear from the forum and the great experience of the people in this forum what they use and what they can recommend.  Thanks  


  • 2.  Re: Testing Tools

    Posted Feb 24, 2010 02:30 AM
    Hi Tienie,Worksoft Certify is a very good solution for the automated testing of Plex applications. ADC Austin has created a Plex interface for Worksoft Certify to enable capturing all the plex controls. You  can contact John Rhodes of ADC to get more information about it. jdrhodes@adcaustin.com  regards,Christoph  


  • 3.  Re: Testing Tools

    Posted Jun 24, 2015 04:41 PM

    hi tienie,

     

    what did you end up doing in terms of automated testing if you don't mind me asking?

     

    many thanks

    george



  • 4.  Re: Testing Tools

    Posted Jun 25, 2015 01:05 PM

    Hi Tienie,

     

    We are currently investigating for automated testing too. We've take a look at Worksoft Certify that offer a very good product that should work with CA Plex, but it was way off our budget. It was a 250k purchase with annual support fees of 50k. Maybe it fits yours, if so, take a look because they seems to have a great product.

     

    Because it was too expensive for us, now we are investing with SmartBear (testComplete) they told me it should work fine with CA Plex, so we've start investigating there tool.

     

    Please let me know if the product you're looking at works fine.

     

    Regards



  • 5.  Re: Testing Tools

    Posted Jun 25, 2015 02:40 PM

    I evaluated SmartBear (testComplete) last month. Have always been a fan of SOAPUI for testing SOAP services which is also SmartBear product so knew it would be nice to look at. Nice IDE, nice spy, nice recording of keystrokes, nice reports etc but does not work with Plex Grids in winc. I knew this but wanted to evaluate it anyway.

     

    Loved the idea of Work Certify of testing business process and being open to all instead of just the testing team, I want everyone to get involved in automated testing if possible and not script people. But couldnt get the testing team to give it a look.

     

     

    I would refer you to  C++ Client Testing Tool Support of WinWidgets Grid where I have posted the links to Work Certify and Original Software which have both  solved the issue with Plex winc grids, kudos to Original Software that did this a decade ago, had a demo of their software and it looked 10 years old which kinda put me off but they know there IBMi if that is important to you.

     

    I have written my own automated testing tool called AutoTestBox - Stella Tools (CA Plex Developer Tools) which allows you to do unit and integration tests on server function Plus with the aid of www.autoitscript.com can test desktop winc applications using scripting,

     

    But what do you want to automate Desktop Applications, Webbrowser applications, Services.


    BUT WHAT WE REALLY WANT IS DRIVER AUTOMATION....scripting and keystrokes and windows messaging means you create a program to test a program but who tests the test that tests the test. Automation has moved towards allowing access to a programs methods and them being invoked instead of invoking them through GUI interaction. But this involves us coding to coded UI test frameworks...all not available to us at visual studio 2005......read Testing tools| Visual Studio  look how far Plex has fallen behind!!!!!!!!!!


    So my advice would be get CA to support the current version of Visual Studio BUT not simply to gen and build existing 2005 functionality but to expose the ten years of visual studio functionality to the action diagram and the panels that we have misssed!!!!! If not dump Plex and get native visual studio developers to consume plex server functions in some way...


    Lastly if you are in lucky situation of starting off on automation and have no previous automation then look away from script based testing if you have the money to do it.





  • 6.  Re: Testing Tools

    Posted Jun 26, 2015 03:03 AM

    My client's current solution to test web-browser, desktop application (Plex), rest services is all open source (SeleniumWeb Driver, JUnit, JsonSimple, Windows Messaging to interface to CA Plex panels ), with a thin layer of in-house written java to connect it all together and write tests while using Jenkins as the viewer/orchestrator

     

    I use AutoTestBox - Stella Tools (CA Plex Developer Tools) for development unit and integration testing, AutoIT to automate lots of the Desktop Application tasks (note not test but automate processes but will depending on projects can use AutoIT scripts in AutoTestBox)



  • 7.  Re: Testing Tools