UIA Pro Legacy or Enhanced Beta offering

The Beta version of the add-in provides: 

• Significant performance improvement.

• Increased testing stability.

UI Automation applications often have deep object hierarchies. The enhanced add-in supports full access and interaction with all of the objects in the hierarchy.

New methods enable comprehensive and flexible traversal of the test object tree:

• You can retrieve child or parent objects from all levels, or specify how many level of objects to retrieve.

• You can also provide a description of the type of children or parent objects to retrieve.

For details, see the following methods in the UIAPro section of the Object Model Reference:

GetAncestors, GetChildren, GetDescendants, GetParent. Use these methods instead of the ChildObjects method, which is still supported for backward compatibility.

Common methods and properties are supported on objects retrieved during a run session, such as by the GetCell method.

The newly supported methods are: Exist, GetROProperty, GetTOProperty, SetTOProperty, Highlight, RefreshObject, ToString, CheckProperty, WaitProperty.

This enables robust tests that can interact with objects found during runtime in the application's object hierarchy.

For example, the following statement is supported in the enhanced Beta add-in and not in the legacy one: 

UIAProDataGrid("dataGrid").GridPattern.GetCell(1,1).Highlight

Assistive properties are supported, enabling the creation of optimized test object descriptions.

In the Legacy UIA Pro Add-in, all object identification properties are included in all UIA Pro test object descriptions.

In the Beta Add-in, you can see in the Object Identification dialog box which properties are considered for each type of UIA Pro test object. For details, see Configure object identification for a test object class.

Currently, you cannot edit this list of properties, but after a test object is added to the Object Repository, you can edit its description, modifying the list of properties used to identify it, as well as their values.

The following known issues have been fixed:

• Object indexes, meant to uniquely identify objects in the application, were not used correctly.

• Some steps, such as Highlight, GetROProperty, and RefreshObject were not included in the run results report.

• When an object that was temporarily inaccessible in the application became available again, test steps on that object failed.

• In some situations, OpenText Functional Testing stopped responding. In some of these cases, customers were required to reapply some registry keys.

• In some cases, highlighting an object from the object repository did not work.

• The OpenText Functional Testing user interface did not clearly display the progression of the test run from step to step, sometimes appearing to have stopped.

• When an object cannot be identified, the step fails and the report specifies which object could not be found. In some cases, the report specified one of the objects in the tests object's hierarchy, but not the object that was missing.

The following changes in the Object Model Reference may require you to adjust your tests when you switch between the legacy UIA Pro Add-in and the enhanced Beta one.

In the enhanced Beta add-in:

• The WaitForInputIdle method returns a Boolean value, indicating whether the window is idle or the timeout expired. In the legacy add-in, this method returned no value.

• The GetSupportedPatterns method returns a collection of patterns rather than an array. Therefore, if you used UBound(<returned value>) in your scripts, replace it with <returned value>.Count.

• The ToString method may return values that are slightly different than in the legacy add-in.

  For example, the UIAProProgressBar.ToString method returns the string ProgressBarTO progressbar. The legacy add-in returns a string with an additional space: ProgressBarTO progress bar.

• The following methods return enumeration strings, whereas in the legacy add-in they return numeric values:

  GetExpandCollapseState, GetRole, GetState, GetPrimaryTraversalDirection, GetSupportedSelectionMode, GetToggleState, GetWindowInteractionState, GetWindowVisualState.

  For details, see the UIAPro section of the Object Model Reference.

• You can use the DoubleClick and DoubleClickCell methods instead of Activate and ActivateCell. The Activate methods are still supported for backward compatibility.

• Leading and trailing spaces in property values retrieved from the application are no longer trimmed. This is the case when spying on objects and when retrieving properties using test object methods.
  

  Note that when a test object is added to the object repository, leading and trailing spaces in mandatory properties are still trimmed.

• Tooltip objects are correctly identified as UIAProToolTip test objects. In the legacy UIA Pro, these were identified as generic UIAProObjects.

1. Make sure OpenText Functional Testing is closed.

2. As an administrator, run the <Installdir>\dat\DisableLegacyUIAPro.bat batch file.

To return to the default UIA Pro Add-in functionality, turn on the default add-in.

1. Make sure OpenText Functional Testing is closed.

2. As an administrator, run the <Installdir>\dat\EnableLegacyUIAPro.bat batch file.

When entering a parameter value in a UIA Pro test step, do not use the enumeration suggestions provided by the code completion suggestions. Rather, use the string or integer values documented in the Object Model Reference.

UI Automation applications often have deep object hierarchies. This add-in has limited access to contained objects.

The Object Identification Center shows only a limited hierarchy of a spied UIA Pro object. To see the full hierarchy, use the Object Spy.

Most common methods and properties are not supported on objects retrieved during a run session.

In the OIC, you can only spy on objects, highlight them, and add them to the object repository.

A test object description is created, based on the properties listed in the Object Identification Dialog Box. However, the OIC does not indicate which properties are included, nor can you modify the selection using the check boxes.

The following known issues are relevant when working with the Object Spy:

• If you spy on objects with no test open, the test object icons are not displayed.

• The Compare functionality is not supported.

The following methods are not supported on UIA Pro test objects: 

• CaptureBitmap

• GetAllROProperties

• GetAllTOProperties

• Output

• SetSecureValue

The following known issues are relevant for run result reports:

• Images in reports are currently not supported.

• Upon error, report steps for CheckProperty and WaitProperty methods provide a generic error message rather than specifying the property value.

• Report steps for the GetAncestors, GetChildren, and GetDescendants methods do not include the description argument, even if it was provided in the test.