Comparing Test Complete and UFT

Having tried AutomatedQA's Test Complete for a while, I am just trying to put down my views on it when you compare it with HP Quick Test Professional. Both of these tools are excellent for regression testing with automation. However, there is a huge cost difference between the two. You can only buy 1 QTP license for the cost of six Test Complete License.

Missing Features in Test Complete

• There is no Object Repository concept in Test Complete instead it supports something called as Name Mapping which you will find a bit disorganized when you compare it with QTP.
• Regular Expressions are missing which is a huge huge miss and a big disadvantage. Regular expressions have a big role in automation testing of complex dynamic applications and AutomatedQA needs to understand this soon.
• Descriptive Programming is not available which again is a big ingredient of any test automation.

Test Complete's Advantage over HP Quick Test Pro

• It seems faster than QTP but then again it is because of lesser features and the right time to evaluate this will be when you get all the QTP features in Test Complete. There is lesser CPU usage and higher stability. If you are testing a simple plain application, Test Complete is your candidate.
• Object Identification can be done at different levels like, Document Object Model (DOM), Tree, Tag and Hybrid. The Hybrid option of object identification gives you a faster identification at runtime which is way too fast than QTP.
• Load Testing feature comes in the same license.

Test Complete's Disadvantage over HP QTP

• The major drawbacks are in the form of missing features like regular expressions and descriptive programming.
• You do not have a proper sync function like the Browser.Sync in QTP. An inbuilt sync function plays a major role in Web Testing. Although, there are a few inbuilt sync functions in Test Complete but they are not as efficient as that of QTP.
• Using the Document Object Model (DOM) method of object identification, object identification gets way too slow compared to QTP when you try to find child objects. QTP uses DOM for object identification in maximum cases when you find child objects.
• No accompanied product support for Business Process Testing as in the case of QTP. QTP has Quality Center BPT as the Keyword Driven Framework. However, there are 3rd Party KDF engines available in the market for working with Test Complete. Something very similar to Quality Center.

In the end, my conclusion is that it largely depends upon your budget and requirement. If your test automation requirements are getting fulfilled with Test Complete, there is no need to go for QTP at a higher cost. Both these tools solve the same purpose, it is just that QTP is a versatile tool for a critical and more risky Application Under Test (AUT).

Business Process Testing Suite for Test Complete is provided by STAR (Software Test Automation Resource) which works the same way as the Quality Center Business Process Testing works. It is just that it costs way too less that Hewlett Packards's QC.

Share your experience with me and other readers by leaving your comment below