SilkTest - End of Life information

Earlier Borland announced end of support for few of older versions. I think, it is announced in the last month of 2006. I have given the URL below.

Updating Existing Automation to Eliminate Obsolete Specifiers

In version 8.0, SilkTest will discontinue support for certain platforms and application environments:

* Windows 95, NT4 6A, Windows 2000 SP 1,2,3
* IE 4 (SP2), IE 5.01, IE 5.5, IE 6 SP 0 a.k.a. Gold
* Netscape 4.x, 6.x
* PowerBuilder 6.5, 7, 8
* J2SE 1.1, 1.2.2, 1.3.0, 1.4.0, 1.4.1
* AOL 7, 8 and 8 Plus
* SilkTest’s VO extensions (see Note - Discontinuation of VO )
* JInitiator 

In general, SilkTest attempts to preserve backward compatibility. However, the discontinuation of support for VO extensions, leaving only one extension (the DOM extension) per browser version, made it desirable to streamline the list of browser specifiers in 4Test.inc. Additionally, 4Test.inc included several GUI specifiers that represented platforms that have not been supported for quite a few versions of SilkTest, so the list of GUI specifiers has also been trimmed. If your automation uses GUI or browser specifiers that have been eliminated, then you will need to modify it. The information presented below will describe the changes to the specifier lists and will aid you in updating your automation.

Silktest Info URL: http://www.segue.com/support/technical-support/silktest-end-of-life.asp

VisualTest Support

VisualTest support has been stopped for around 8 years. But Still few companies are using Visual Test. The two active forums are available for Visual test. One is mt_info Yahoogroups and another one is in SQA Forums. Recently that Yahoo groups also closed.

Visual test cost is very less and many users were there. The last version is 6.5 But still few people are using VT. Thats why I thought to put few visual test code snippets. I am planning to put few posts for visual test.

See the one post from a VT user.
Quote:

After a very extensive search i have found this forum,and i suppose it is still active for Visual Test. Right now i knew that Visual Test is obsolete in the market.But i am pushed to use the tool.As i am very new to testing and currently i do not have the tool as well,I'll be getting it by November 1st week.So could any one help me in starting the preparation.If any of you can guide me where to get the Book Visual Test Bible by Thomas R.Arnold it would be really help full.If any one have the copy same and ready for selling i am ready for purchasing it.So please please help needed.

I hope that this will be applicable to Winrunner in the future.....!!!

Automation Tool support

In my first job, I used to automate by using VisualTest. There is no updates, after IBM acquired Rational. In this year, the yahoogroups also removed. VisualTest is a simple and powerful tool. Similarly Segue was acquired by Borland. Initially Borland took much time to set the updates on Silktest and Silkperformer. Later it announced that older versions of Silktest and silkperformer will not have support. Now its time for HP-Mercury.

Yesterday I got a mail from my friend. It said that HP is going to stop support for Winrunner. PDF is available here. There is a solution to migrate winrunner scripts to QuickTestProfessional. It is available at win-quick I donot know how much painful task it is for each company.


The frequent acquisitions are making many questions among to automation engineers.

1. Whether this product will be promoted?
2. Whether the updates will be added frequently as per changing technology?
3. What will happen to future if the product is ended?
4. How will be job market for this particular tool?