Understanding the Application Area

The application area is the foundation upon which components are built. An application area provides a single point of maintenance for all elements associated with the testing of a specific part of an application.

In the application area, you can define specific settings that are relevant for testing a particular part of your application. For example, you can define settings that instruct QuickTest to load specific add-ins at the start of a run session, run a component only on specified applications, activate a recovery scenario under particular conditions, and so forth. You can also specify the keywords that are available to any component that is associated with that particular application area.

An important aspect of application areas are the resource files that can be used by a component. After you create these resource files you store them in the same Quality Center project used by the Subject Matter Experts who create and run the business process tests for the specific application. Typical resource files include function libraries and shared object repositories.

You create function libraries that contain functions, or operations (also known as keywords), that can be called by a component. These functions contain programming logic that encapsulates the steps needed to perform a particular task, and they enhance the functionality of the component that calls them. You can use QuickTest's built-in function library editor to create these function libraries. You can also use the QuickTest Function Definition Generator to insert basic function definitions, and then complete each function by adding its code.

After you associate function library files with an application area, you can prioritize them according to relevance. By associating a function library with an application area, any component based on that application area will have access to all public functions defined within that function library.

You also create, populate, and maintain shared object repository files that are used by QuickTest to identify the objects in your application. You define and modify test object information in shared object repositories using the QuickTest Object Repository Manager. After you associate shared object repository files with the application area, you can prioritize them according to relevance. By associating a shared object repository with an application area, any component based on that application area will have access to all of its test objects and other elements.

You can create multiple application areas—each one focusing on a particular part (area) of the application being tested. For example, for a flight reservation application, one application area could be created for the login module, another application area for the flight search module, another for the flight reservation module, and still another for the billing moduleIn addition to creating and maintaining the resource files associated with the application areas, you can also use QuickTest to debug components and their associated function libraries. You can also create components in QuickTest, although this is more often done by Subject Matter Experts using Quality Center.