Why UFT Needs to Go !
I have finally made up my mind to try to stay away from UFT. I don’t think HP has done justice to QTP after introducing UFT.
I clearly remember the first time UFT was launched in 2012, I was like – “Wowww ! It’s a great effort by HP. There are some stability issues that I’m sure will be fixed as the tool matures”.
In 2015, I was like – “Oh myyy ! UFT is still in same shape. Let me move my Web based tests to Selenium.”
Now in 2016, when I need to run my older scripts in UFT, I’m like – “I think I need to move my Desktop based scripts to LeanFT”.
In case you haven’t worked with UFT or you can’t relate to what I’m saying, here are a list of things I have been facing with UFT:-
- Debugging – I place a breakpoint in my code, while pressing F10 and going to consecutive lines, UFT goes into a state of TRANCE and I need to restart it and repeat the same process (and hope it doesn’t happen this time).
- Error Handling – In the name of Error Handling, all we have is “On Error Resume Next”. Time to move on to try catch !
- Latency Issue – I sometimes can’t type in the UFT IDE coz its just so slow. I have to write in a text editor and paste in UFT IDE.
- Watch Window – The Dreaded HRESULT E_Fail error comes up when I try to look up something in the Watch Window.
- Automation Object Model – Following statement – Set objQTP = CreateObject(“QuickTest.Application”) takes atleast 10 times more time with UFT as compared to QTP.
These are only some of the issues that I have personally encountered. Apart from the above, freezing/crashing is quite frequent and performance is very slow in comparison to QTP 11.
In a nutshell, I think Selenium is awesome if you want to automate JUST web based applications but if you want the whole package of Automating Web as well as Desktop applications and use modern programming languages like C# and Java instead of VBScript, go for LeanFT ! For learning more about it, you can refer my short tutorial.
I don’t feel happy saying this, but RIP UFT :(
Agree with your cons of using UFT. However, I am still to find a product with coverage as vast as that of UFT (Web, Desktop, Mobile). Some of the products that I came across are really good and have some exciting features but sadly are limited to a specific domain. The stability issues are definitely troublesome, which in my personal opinion if fixed can boost the position of UFT to the front row of the race.
Nice post Harshit! Especially in times of agile/lean development projects, UFT based automation testing is quickly disappearing. Selenium is definitely a very versatile way of solving this problem and keeping up with shorter release cycles.