Differences Between QTP and RFT

QTP refers to Quick Test Professional, a product developed by HP to provide functional and regression test automation for different software environments and applications that are developed. QTP is also widely used in enterprise quality assurance. RFT, on the other hand, refers to a Relational Functional Tester which is a tool for automated testing developed by IBM’s software division.  Users have the capability of creating tests that mirror the actions and assessments that would be given by a human tester. Although the face values of these two tools is similar, there are several differences observed between them.

Differences

In script generation and language, RFT is capable of developing fully functional VB scripts as well as Java scripts.  QTP on the other hand can only generate VB scripts.  Looking at the scripts that these two create, the script in HP’s QTP is graphic user interface (GUI) based. On each step that is performed by the user, auto documentation is done. All this is recorded in the table and in the keyword view, thus making a novice to feel confident and  making it easy to work with the tool. Any user of RFT must have a fair level of programming experience as it does not have a graphic interface as in QTP. A novice would therefore find using RFT extremely challenging.

In the playback of scripts, a replay of user actions performed during the recording phase is done. In contrast with RFT, which does not allow selection of multiple values (which is done by use of shift keys), QTP does support the selection of multiple values. Different test cases can be generated by the use of data driven commands in RFT, but the output of values has to be entered manually. QTP uses parametrization of tests in the generation of test cases.

In object identification, QTP is very good and can identify any custom object. RFT on the other hand targets standard objects but does not perform well for custom objects.  This goes on to test execution where QTP is seen to execute very quickly as opposed to RFT, which is significantly slower in execution.

In reporting capabilities, QTP employs standard reporting formats such as HTML and XML with the default format being its own user interface and HTML. RFT, on the other hand, only works with a single format, HTML, which is also the default format.  Custom coding is required if other interfaces are needed.

In the browsing capabilities, QTP is quite advanced and can support Internet Explorer 7.0 and Netscape 2.0. IBM’s RFT cannot support both Internet 7.0 and Netscape 2.0. The framework supported by RFT is keyword driven, data driven modularity. QTP, on the other hand, supports library architecture, modularity, keyword driven, and data driven.

The active screen availability does not have RFT available in it while QTP supports active screen availability. HP’s QTP supports a descriptive programming approach. Looking at the costs for procurement, RFT is significantly cheaper as opposed to procurement costs associated with QTP.

Summary

There are major strengths and weaknesses of both QTP and RFT. A comparison of features shows that overall QTP has better features than RFT.

If a novice tester is looking for a good testing program, QTP is the recommended program as it is GUI based

RFT does not allow for multiple select feature using shift keys, which is however possible in QTP

Output values must be manually entered into the data pool in RFT

QTP allows for the generation of output during runtime

Costwise, RFT is cheaper than QTP