Mercury is the world leader in application delivery, with 58.8-percent market share in automated software quality and performance testing products.

QuickTest Professional is most suitable Automation Software Testing Tool in this fast changing software development world.

Mercury QuickTest Professional : provides the industrys best solution for functional test and regression test automation – addressing every major software application and environment.

Points worth noticing about QTP (QuickTest Professional):
As QTP (QuickTest Professional) is relatively easy to use, an organization has to spend minimal time, money and effort in training its employees on QTP. QTP allows you to do regression testing with ease on repeatedly changing applications and environments. QTP allows sharing automated testing assets, functions, and objecting repositories enabling an organization to deliver quality products and services, and improve revenues and profitability. QTP can be integrated with WinRunner, LoadRunner, and TestDirector.

Quick Test Professional (QTP) is an automated functional Graphical User Interface (GUI) testing tool created by the HP subsidiary Mercury Interactive that allows the automation of user actions on a web or client based computer application. It is primarily used for functional regression test automation. QTP uses a scripting language built on top of Visual Basic Script to specify the test procedure, and to manipulate the objects and controls of the application under test.Overview
Quick Test Professional (QTP) is a UI Automation framework designed mainly for Windows application and web applications. It works by identifying the objects in the application UI or a web page and performing the desired operations on them (like mouse clicks or keyboard events); it can also be used to capture object properties like name, handler ID etc.

Plug-ins
Plug-ins are used to make recording more acceptable to a specific application, we use web plug-ins to automate test cases with respect to web applications. QTP has default plug-ins for ActiveX controls, web applications and VB objects. Plugins for other objects, such as Microsoft .NET objects, are also available.

Record and Playback
Initial development of automated tests with QTP is usually done by record-and-playback. A users actions are captured via Microsofts Component Object Model (COM). These are recorded as VB script-like commands into œActions, which are similar to functions. All manipulated objects that QTP recognizes are also added to the object repository. Once recorded one gets editable QTP scripts.
After clicking on the playback button all these actions will be played back. During playback, QTP attempts to identify and manipulate the same objects, again using COM.Active Screen
QTP captures the screen of the applicaton and saves along with the script. The active screen section highlights the objects in the active screen as the user navigates through the script so the user knows what object he/she will be performing the action upon. Active screen is also helpful in creating checkpoints.

Checkpoints
Checkpoints are an important feature in QTP, used for verification of the tests. One can check each event made on the automation and can add check point to check if a particular object, text or a bitmap is present in the automaton run. Regular expressions can also be used in check points.

Recovery
Recovery is a concept like exception handling in a programming language, which can be applied when an unexpected failure occurs. For instance if an application crash occurs and a message dialog appears, QTP can be instructed to open the application and continue with the rest of the test cases from there.

Output Value
This feature is used to output values to the data table when a particular event is made. For instance if one wants to store the default value of the text box before the start of the test one can use this and store in a data table when an event is made on it.Data Table
The data table is a Microsoft Excel workbook that can be easily accessed from within QTP. It contains one worksheet for each Action, including the hidden global action at the top of the action tree (see Keyword View). It is primarily used to implement keyword-driven testing.There are two types of Data Tables available in QTP. One is Global Data Sheet and Local Data Sheet.Virtual Objects
As this tool is designed to be used across applications, some objects may not be recognized properly. So it is designed with a virtual object concept which can be used to overcome this drawback. If an object is not recorded one can define that object as a personal virtual object and build a virtual object repository. The next time the object is recorded it will be recognized as a virtual object from your repository and playback will be possible.Transactions
This feature can be used to calculate the time required to run a particular test or particular steps in the tests. Transactions are most often used in automated software performance testing, so they are infrequently used in QTP.Results
QTP generates the result file for the test cases at the end of test in the form of XML tree. It gives the complete detail of PASS and FAILS counts, along with the tractability of failures with appropriate messages. It is easy to verify the results from these files.User Interface
QuickTest provides two main views of a script: Keyword View and Expert View. They are selected from tabs at the bottom of the QTP window.Keyword View
Keyword View is QTPs default test procedure interface. It displays a test procedure as a tree of Actions and functions. The tree contains columns listing the Action or function name, any parameters, and comments. This mode is most useful for the beginners in operating with the tool. This view allows the user to select the objects either from the application or from the Object Repository and the user can select the methods to be performed on those objects. The script is automatically generated. User can also set check points from keyword view.

Expert View
In Expert View, QTP allows display and editing of the a tests source code. All test actions can be edited here except for the root Global action. Expert View acts as an IDE for the test. It includes most standard IDE features, such as breakpoints. The QuickTest Professional scripting language is built on top of VB script. As such, all the features of VB script can be used in QTP. VB scripts have very versatile features like basic programming function calls, variable, API calls, message boxes, etc. When combined with the record and playback of QTP, many tasks can be automated.This view is most suitable for the advanced users in QTP and the user can write the customized user defined functions and test them.

Vendor: Mercury Interactive
Scripting Language: VBScript
Support Site: www.mercury.com
Latest Version: QTP 9.2