This is the 1st part of a two part tutorial for Descriptive Programming. It introduces Descriptive Programming and its two type viz. static and dynamic.
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Video Transcript with Key Takeaways Highlighted:
To understand the concept of descriptive programming lets understand the significance of an objects name in QTP
An object name is simply used to map an object in script with its description in object repository.
Meaning if I change the object name here to ABC and correspondingly change the object name in script to ABC the script will still work fine.
Consider this statement, which sets the Agent Name as Guru99. Let us do an experiment..Let's delete the Object Description of Agent Name Win Edit Box from the Object Repository.
If I run the test again it will fail since it can not recognize the object. Lets examine the reason why the script is failing
During Run Time, QTP identifies the operation that is performed on WinEdit box and the Object Description in Object Repository is stored as Agent Name
It uses this name to track the object in object repository. For a parent you cannot have two child objects with the same name. Hence, QTP uniquely maps the object in the repository
It then uses the stored description in the Object Repository and replaces the name with the description. It then uses this statement to identify the object in the application under test
Since in our case we had deleted this object description all together the script fails
But what if instead of QTP replacing the object description, you as a tester directly specify the object descriptions in your script. This is nothing but "Descriptive Programming"
You can use Descriptive programming in two ways 1) Static 2) Dynamic
Lets look at Static First. In Static Method , for object identification in the following format property:=values , you mention an objects property ,and its corresponding values separated by a colon and equal to sign. This format is called property value pair and is enclosed in inverted commas
If your object uses multiple descriptions for identification, you can specify those using commas
So in our case the description for Agent Name becomes "nativeclass:=Edit", "attached text:=Agent Name:"
Next Step is to Replace Object Name with above description. In QTP , lets do the replacement and run the test. It runs fine . Inthe test results the Agent Name object is enclosed in parentheses indicating that Descriptive Programming was used in its identification. This is the static method
The second method of doing the same action is using Dynamic Descriptive programming
In case your script uses the descriptive programming object candidate multiple times, it will be very tiresome to specify all the property value pairs for each statement
In such cases you can make use of Description Class provided by QTP
