A new option for automated testing

“Consumers have decreasing tolerance for anything that doesn’t work right,” says John Traynor, vice president, Products, at Bsquare Corp. “The more thoroughly a product is tested prior to launch, the more reliable it’s likely to be.”

And if testing is automated, as opposed to manual, there is likely to be more of it done in less time to greater effect.

BSQUARE Corp. recently released TestQuest 10 for automated testing of embedded devices and applications. TestQuest 10 combines features of two earlier Bsquare products, TestQuest Pro for test creation, and TestQuest CountDown for test execution. “In addition, we did extensive product research and added many of our customers’ top requests,” Traynor says. “The result is a solution that provides greater breadth and depth of automated testing while delivering tremendous value to customers.”

Traynor says TestQuest 10 mimics the actual type of interaction a human would have with a device without the limitations, strain and errors associated with manual testing. “The automation features in TestQuest 10 can also improve the quality of testing,” he adds. “It provides testing that’s similar to what would be encountered in the real world—across multiple environments, in different geographies, and with varied hardware—so developers and device manufacturers can detect defects that might not otherwise arise in a single location or test environment.”

TestQuest 10 integrates with Microsoft Visual Studio, which is popular with app developers, and with software version control systems. Traynor says there’s no need for developers to have to learn to use new tools. The product supports test development in C#, Visual Basic, IronPython, IronRuby, and any other language that supports the .NET common language runtime (CLR).

Preparing Recommendations

“Customers decide what test cases they want to develop, and those tests can run 24×7 using automation versus manual testers,” Traynor says. “We’re seeing dramatic improvement in customers’ ability to get products to market quickly, and they are seeing a big improvement in customer satisfaction. Our automated testing technology helps them reduce risk by identifying defects more reliably – avoiding false passes and fails, for example. The fact that each test is identical can help developers identify defects that might otherwise be hard to find.”