What is UFT/QTP?

HP Unified Functional Testing (UFT) is a software that helps testers to perform an automated functional testing seamlessly without monitoring once script development is complete.

Where UFT/QTP Fits in?

UFT/QTP is a Functional testing tool which is best suited for regression testing of the applications. UFT/QTP is a licensed/commercial tool owned by HP which is one of the most popular tools available in the market. It compares the actual and expected result and reports the results in the execution summary.

UFT/QTP History and Evolution:

HP Quick Test Professional was originally owned by Mercury Interactive and it was acquired by Hp. Its original name was Astra Quick Test and later named as Quick Test Professional but the latest version is known as Unified Functional Tester(UFT).

Version History:

Now let us take a look at the version history of QTP.

Versions	Timelines
Astra Quick Test v1.0 to v5.5 – Mercury Interactive	May 1998 to Aug 2001
QuickTest Professional v6.5 to v9.0 – Mercury Interactive	Sep 2003 to Apr 2006
Hp-QuickTest Professional v9.1 to v11.0 – Acquired and Released by HP	Feb 2007 to Sep 2010
Hp-Unified Functional Testing v11.5 to v11.53	2012 to Nov 2013
Hp-Unified Functional Testing v12.0 to v12.50	Mar 2014 to Jul 2015

Some of the important aspects of UFT/QTP:

• It uses VB Script as its scripting language. (A scripting language is one that gets interpreted at run time)
• QTP runs only in a windows environment.
• The current version of UFT is 12.50 (Latest version Unified Functional Testing – UFT 12.5)
• The technologies it supports are Web, Java .Net, SAP, Oracle, Siebel, PeopleSoft, Web Services, and many major languages. Although some of the older versions don’t support all the technologies listed.
• Easy to use, ease of navigation, results validation and Report generation.
• Can also be used for Mobile Application Testing.

Some disadvantages of UFT/QTP:

• Unlike Selenium, QTP works in Windows operating system only.
• It is a commercial tool, the licensing cost is very high.
• Slow in execution when compared to even open source tools like Selenium.
• All versions of Browsers are not supported and the testers need to wait for the patch to be released for each one of the major versions.
• You need to buy different addins – Java, Oracle, SAP, .Net, Seibel, Peoplesoft etc