KnowledgeInbox (By Tarun Lalwani)

Review - Test Design Studio (TDS)

Test Design Studio (TDS) is enhanced IDE for WinRunner and QTP. It provides a Visual Studio style editor which provided enhanced code editing experience. This review will walk you through some of the key features of TDS

Solution
A solution allows you to group various types of files into one solution. This includes QTP, Winrunner, VBS, text, ini etc…

Expand/Collapse functions
The editor allows expanding and collapsing function into single lines.

Smart Indentation
The editor is smart to identify the indentation for current line. So if you are Typing “End Function” but are not at the same ident level as the function start then TDS will automatically decrease the indent level to match the function start.

Track Modification
Lines changed during current session can be tracked using the color code yellow(unsaved)/green(saved).

Split Windows
You split a window horizontally or vertically or both. This allows editing various parts of the file at the same time.

Enhanced Intellisense
TDS provides intellisense for almost everything. It provides intellisense for all QTP object even when the machine does not have QTP installed. This allows automation developers to easily code there scripts on any machine without being dependent on QTP. TDS also provides intellisense on COM libraries available to be used with the CreateObject function.

Using smart tags TDS allows you to quickly reference a library. Once reference is added to a library, intellisense is available for all objects present in the library

Other intellisense features:

• Intellisense for QTP OR (only in case QTP 9.2 or higher installed on machine)
• Intellisense for QTP OR using exported XML (QTP not required on the machine)
• XML documentation for custom intellisense. This is really cool feature which makes coding even more fun.

Object Browser
Object Browser provides easy reference to all methods and properties available for a class/library in the current solution.

Quality Center Support

TDS allows adding different quality center servers. Once the server is added you can access any of the the projects to which you have access. TDS has following feature when working with QC

• View/Modify the workflow scripts of project
• View/Modify QTP, WinRunner, VBS, XML etc… files present in QC. Allows auto sync which updates the file on the QC server
• Add reference to other file types which TDS does not support (excel files etc…)
• Run multiple SQL Queries on project’s database tables and export results to excel
• Active/Deactivate any project from within TDS (provided you have admin access) and few more admin related feature
• Supports VCS (QC project should have VCS add-in installed)
• Supports scripted Business Process Components

Inbuilt Browser
TDS provides an inbuilt tabbed browser window, which you can use browse websites

Why TDS and not QTP?
QTP IDE lacks many features and is no where near to being called a professional IDE for automation programmers. TDS helps bridge this gap and improve productivity of automation engineers. QTP licenses cost far more then a TDS licenses and most of the times not all QTP licenses are utilized simultaneously. Which gives a good reason to consider purchasing less licenses for QTP and investing in TDS licenses. Licensing information can be found here

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Tags used - Editor, intellisense, Patterson, Patterson Consulting, TDS, Test Design Studio, VBScript

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