BENEFITS: Reduced Test Creation Time. Early Notification of GUI Changes.

KEY FEATURES: Best of class ``ease of use'' for Testers. Strong Manual Synchronization Modes. Automatic Output Synchronization. Automatic Object Extraction. OCR engine for font and face size independence.

APPLICATIONS: GUI testing of all Types: Local, client/server. Load generation capability.

TestWorks INDEX VALUE: +70 Points if >50% PASS ratios maintained.

There are several available options for the kind and type of Capture/Playback technology you can use as the basis for testing. CAPBAK/X is for Xwindows/Motif GUI testing. CAPBAK/Unix is for serial-port capture playback. CAPBAK/NI is a non-invasive solution.

CAPBAK/X, a test capture/playback system, stands alone or works as part of the fully integrated TestWorks/Regression multi-platform suite of testing tools.

CAPBAK/X captures user activities during the testing process including keystrokes, mouse movements, captured bitmap images, extracted ASCII characters, object activity, and image verification information. CAPBAK/X records them into a test script expressed in the C language. A built-in C-language interpreter allows all events and actions to be replayed automatically as full C procedures.

CAPBAK/X is the only capture/playback tool on the market which offers interchangeable triple-mode testing in the same test session: TrueTime Mode, Object Mode, and Optical Character Recognition modes.

Captured images and/or character patterns provide baselines against which future runs of the tests are compared. CAPBAK/X's automatic output synchronization ensures reliable playback, allowing tests to be run unsupervised as often as required.

With the Xvirtual display capability, test runs can be executed in the background, freeing the screen for other activities. This capability can also be used to invoke a single application multiple times on the same workstation, thus allowing for load testing in a client/server environment.

Used in conjunction with its TestWorks/Regression companion tools, EXDIFF and SMARTS, the regression testing process can be completely automatic. The SMARTS test management system organizes CAPBAK/X's test sessions into a hierarchical structure for execution individually or as a part of a test suite. This process is based on the verification criteria selected for each test. Discrepancies are reported by SMARTS for further analysis. Extraneous discrepancies can be masked during the comparison process via EXDIFF. Following test execution, SMARTS logs the test statistics and generates PASS/FAIL results into various standard reports.

CAPBAK/NI, part of TestWorks' fully integrated TestWorks/Regression suite of regression testing tools, is a capture/playback tool for use in software testing and evaluation processes where non-invasive operation is required.

A special hardware device, called a human simulator board, is connected to the Application Under Test (AUT). This board captures keystrokes and mouse movements, as well as screen contents and printer outputs. This information is sent from the simulator board to a host computer.

The simulator board uses hardware-based video synchronization to control the automatic playback, thus it is able to recognize when the application is ready to accept new input. It is also position-independent, using on-board memory based pixel-to-pixel comparison.

During playback, the recorded keystrokes and mouse movements are reproduced on the AUT. The host computer drives the AUT input channels and checks the system responses. This hardware-based technique is intended to provide non-invasive capture and playback. Testing is totally independent from the AUT, which remains unmodified. CAPBAK/NI tests your application as a human operator would, and provides fast, accurate and reliable/repeatable results.

When used with its TestWorks/Regression companion tools, EXDIFF and SMARTS, CAPBAK/NI provides an integrated solution for test development and regression testing. CAPBAK/NI has been designed for control under SMARTS to fully automate regression testing. SMARTS manages large hierarchies of tests, and controls test execution, evaluation, and result recording. EXDIFF compares test outcomes from CAPBAK/NI with defined baselines.

CAPBAK/UNIX, a product that shares many features with CAPBAK/X, captures and plays back ASCII-terminal keyboard based test sessions. CAPBAK/UNIX is intended for applications where communication between application terminals and the application itself is via RS-2332 serial line protocols.

CAPBAK/UNIX recordings are done in TrueTime mode, and the recordings are expressed in a line-oriented format that is user-editable. Basic control logic (if...else and while) and basic structural pragmas (#include...) are available to assist in managing complex suites of tests.

The CAPBAK/UNIX includes utilities to edit scripts, to compress execution time or to normalize, minimize, or maximize intra-keyboard delay times. Playback rates are continuously variable. CAPBAK/UNIX is used via a set of ASCII menus or from command-line invocations.

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