Decades of Leadership in the Software Testing Industry

AscentialTest has been forming in the minds of our founders for several years. After building QA Partner/SilkTest at Segue Software in the 90s, they got the opportunity to use their product extensively in the field. As consultants implementing test automation with various tools for more than 10 years, they’ve formed a thorough assessment of the state of the field. What they found surprised them: automated tests were too expensive to build.

Furthermore, the requirement for programming skills to move beyond the superficial tests that can be recorded left out too many members of the team. They also discovered that a large portion of test development time is spent ‘writing code’ to workaround object recognition deficiencies. Some users estimate that time to approach 80%. Clearly this explains why the decision to adopt automation is not always straightforward. With a fresh understanding of the challenges and our heads full of ideas, we’re energized and excited to bring about the next paradigm shift in test automation.

Brian has been working in the field of test automation for more than 30 years. Brian began as a QA Engineer using the testing tools available in the early 1980’s. He joined Segue Software in its infancy and served as the EVP of R&D during that company’s golden years. Brian formed Star Quality, a consulting firm specializing in test automation in the late 90s. After 12 years of experience in the trenches, he’s excited to be building the next generation testing tool that will increase the productivity and and effectiveness of test and development teams.

Dave is a pioneer in the field of automated testing. Dave developed ATF, one of the first automation tools, more than 20 yeas ago. He was a founder and Chief Architect of Segue Software, Inc., the original creators of QA Partner/SilkTest. Dave believes that no testing tool can be easy to use without a solid foundation. That’s why he is committed to providing AscentialTest’s universal agent with the most powerful object recognition engine in the industry.

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Upcoming Webinar

Building Reusable Verification Tests

Tue, Jun 25, 2024 10:00 AM - 11:00 AM EDT

The participant will learn:
* How indirection and dynamic instantiation are used to build generic test steps
* How to create universal verification steps and functions
* About built-in functions that provide information about the current state of the target application
* How metadata can be used to set object-related test data
* How to create a test that walks the main menu of an application, opening and closing each dialog

See How We Achieved an 83% Five Star Rating on Gartner

See how AscentialTest compares to the competition, using 18 key features and functions and across 14 different development platforms

Supported Platforms (14)
Integrated Test Planning
Object Recognition
Object Repository
Test Frameworks

Foreign Language UX
Drag Generations of Actions
Reusable Steps
Scripting
Manual Testing

Parallel Execution
Integrated Defect Tracking
Test Localization
Test Portability
Test Management

Test Execution Management
Integrated Version Control
Integrated Test Management

Eggplant

Gartner 5 Star Reviews:

0 %

TestComplete

Gartner 5 Star Reviews:

0 %

Tosca

Gartner 5 Star Reviews:

0 %

Ranorex Studio

Gartner 5 Star Reviews:

0 %

Features

Platforms

How We Compare

Assential has all of the key features any software testing professional could need to accomplish his testing goals. We have done our best to help future users of Ascential feel comfortable that they have done a thorough evaluation of their key features, costs and service requirements.

Did we get something wrong? Submit anonymous feedback!

AscentialTest

Integrated Test Planning:

Yes

Object Recognition:

Advanced

Object Repository:

Yes, AscentialTest collapses object hierarchy. Objects inherit path from parents which makes maintaining object locators much more robust

Test Frameworks (Productivity):

No framework needed. AscentialTest builds automatically as tests created

Foreign Language UI:

Yes

Supported Platforms:

Webapps: Yes

Windows MFC: Yes

.Net Winforms: Yes

.Net WPF: Yes

PowerBuilder: Yes

PowerServer: Yes

PowerClient: Yes

OMNIS: Yes

Delphi: Yes

Java Swing: Yes

Terminal: Yes

CEF/Electron: Yes

MS Webview 2: Yes

PDF: Yes

Drag Generation of Actions:

Yes

Reusable Steps:

Yes

Scripting:

Visual and manual scripting

Parallel Execution:

Yes

Integrated Defect Tracking:

Yes

Test Localization:

Yes

Test Portability:

Yes

Manual Testing:

Yes

Test Management:

Yes

Test Execution Mgmt:

Yes

Integrated Version Control:

Yes

Integrated Test Data Management:

Yes, built-in with full data typing

Ranorex Studio

Integrated Test Planning:

Object Recognition:

Each element has full path, fragile over time and time consuming to generate, poor recognition of complex objects like treeview, table or grid

Object Repository:

Yes, but there is not object hierarchy so if the depth of the hierarchy changes, many object paths might need to be updated

Test Frameworks (Productivity):

Framework takes a long time to build

Foreign Language UI:

Unmentioned

Supported Platforms:

Webapps: Yes

Windows MFC: Yes

.Net Winforms: Yes

.Net WPF: Yes

PowerBuilder: Unmentioned

PowerServer: No

PowerClient: No

OMNIS: No

Delphi: Yes

Java Swing: Yes

Terminal: No

CEF/Electron: Yes

MS Webview 2: No

PDF: No

Drag Generation of Actions:

Yes

Reusable Steps:

Yes

Scripting:

Manual scripting and limited visual scripting

Parallel Execution:

Integrated Defect Tracking:

Partial

Test Localization:

Partial

Test Portability:

Manual Testing:

Test Management:

Test Execution Mgmt:

Integrated Version Control:

Partial

Integrated Test Data Management:

Partial, uses underlying Excel of AceOleDB

AscentialTest

Integrated Test Planning:

Yes

Object Recognition:

Advanced

Object Repository:

Yes, AscentialTest collapses object hierarchy. Objects inherit path from parents which makes maintaining object locators much more robust

Test Frameworks (Productivity):

No framework needed. AscentialTest builds automatically as tests created

Foreign Language UI:

Yes

Supported Platforms:

Webapps: Yes

Windows MFC: Yes

.Net Winforms: Yes

.Net WPF: Yes

PowerBuilder: Yes

PowerServer: Yes

PowerClient: Yes

OMNIS: Yes

Delphi: Yes

Java Swing: Yes

Terminal: Yes

CEF/Electron: Yes

MS Webview 2: Yes

PDF: Yes

Drag Generation of Actions:

Yes

Reusable Steps:

Yes

Scripting:

Visual and manual scripting

Parallel Execution:

Yes

Integrated Defect Tracking:

Yes

Test Localization:

Yes

Test Portability:

Yes

Manual Testing:

Yes

Test Management:

Yes

Test Execution Mgmt:

Yes

Integrated Version Control:

Yes

Integrated Test Data Management:

Yes, built-in with full data typing

TestComplete

Integrated Test Planning:

Yes

Object Recognition:

Test Complete comes closest to AscentialTest in object recognition. Without the snapshot, it takes more time to test and maintain object definitions

Object Repository:

Similar to Selenium. No object hierarchy. Each object is identified from top to bottom. Alias permits shorter names but it doesn’t resolve issue of object hierarchy changing in future.

Test Frameworks (Productivity):

Does not appear to have appstates, some framework creation appears to be needed

Foreign Language UI:

Unmentioned

Supported Platforms:

Webapps: Yes

Windows MFC: Yes

.Net Winforms: Yes

.Net WPF: Yes

PowerBuilder: Yes (no test API)

PowerServer: Yes (no test API)

PowerClient: Yes (no test API)

OMNIS: No

Delphi: Yes

Java Swing: Yes

Terminal: No

CEF/Electron: Yes

MS Webview 2: No

PDF: Unmentioned

Drag Generation of Actions:

via Recording

Reusable Steps:

Yes

Scripting:

Assisted scripting with autocomplete

Parallel Execution:

Yes

Integrated Defect Tracking:

Yes

Test Localization:

Yes

Test Portability:

Unmentioned

Manual Testing:

Test Management:

Yes

Test Execution Mgmt:

Yes

Integrated Version Control:

Yes

Integrated Test Data Management:

Some, Parameters and Variables are stored at project level, Data is accessed from spreadsheets, external files and databases. They do not have built-in datatables, the mapping to data sources for data driven tests is really tedious and time consuming

AscentialTest

Integrated Test Planning:

Yes

Object Recognition:

Advanced

Object Repository:

Yes, AscentialTest collapses object hierarchy. Objects inherit path from parents which makes maintaining object locators much more robust

Test Frameworks (Productivity):

No framework needed. AscentialTest builds automatically as tests created

Foreign Language UI:

Yes

Supported Platforms:

Webapps: Yes

Windows MFC: Yes

.Net Winforms: Yes

.Net WPF: Yes

PowerBuilder: Yes

PowerServer: Yes

PowerClient: Yes

OMNIS: Yes

Delphi: Yes

Java Swing: Yes

Terminal: Yes

CEF/Electron: Yes

MS Webview 2: Yes

PDF: Yes

Drag Generation of Actions:

Yes

Reusable Steps:

Yes

Scripting:

Visual and manual scripting

Parallel Execution:

Yes

Integrated Defect Tracking:

Yes

Test Localization:

Yes

Test Portability:

Yes

Manual Testing:

Yes

Test Management:

Yes

Test Execution Mgmt:

Yes

Integrated Version Control:

Yes

Integrated Test Data Management:

Yes, built-in with full data typing

Eggplant

Integrated Test Planning:

Object Recognition:

Object recognition is based on images and OCR

Object Repository:

There is no concept of an object repository

Test Frameworks (Productivity):

For simple tests, it appears to be a quick and easy process

Foreign Language UI:

Unmentioned

Supported Platforms:

Webapps: Yes

Windows MFC: Yes

.Net Winforms: Yes

.Net WPF: Yes

PowerBuilder: No

PowerServer: No

PowerClient: No

OMNIS: Yes

Delphi: Yes

Java Swing: Yes

Terminal: Yes

CEF/Electron: Yes

MS Webview 2: Yes

PDF: No

Drag Generation of Actions:

via Recording

Reusable Steps:

Yes

Scripting:

Yes, assisted scripting with autocomplete

Parallel Execution:

Integrated Defect Tracking:

Possibly

Test Localization:

Possibly

Test Portability:

Manual Testing:

Test Management:

Additional product required

Test Execution Mgmt:

Additional product required

Integrated Version Control:

Integrated Test Data Management:

None

Integrated Test Planning:

Yes

Object Recognition:

Advanced

Object Repository:

Yes, AscentialTest collapses object hierarchy. Objects inherit path from parents which makes maintaining object locators much more robust

Test Frameworks (Productivity):

No framework needed. AscentialTest builds automatically as tests created

Foreign Language UI:

Yes

Supported Platforms:

Webapps: Yes

Windows MFC: Yes

.Net Winforms: Yes

.Net WPF: Yes

PowerBuilder: Yes

PowerServer: Yes

PowerClient: Yes

OMNIS: Yes

Delphi: Yes

Java Swing: Yes

Terminal: Yes

CEF/Electron: Yes

MS Webview 2: Yes

PDF: Yes

Drag Generation of Actions:

Yes

Reusable Steps:

Yes

Scripting:

Visual and manual scripting

Parallel Execution:

Yes

Integrated Defect Tracking:

Yes

Test Localization:

Yes

Test Portability:

Yes

Manual Testing:

Yes

Test Management:

Yes

Test Execution Mgmt:

Yes

Integrated Version Control:

Yes

Integrated Test Data Management:

Yes, built-in with full data typing

Integrated Test Planning:

Object Recognition:

Each element has full path, fragile over time and time consuming to generate, poor recognition of complex objects like treeview, table or grid

Object Repository:

Their solution is most similar to Selenium. There is no object hierarchy. Each object is identified from top to bottom.

Test Frameworks (Productivity):

Lots of dialogs and user steps to get work done. Not efficient

Foreign Language UI:

Unmentioned

Supported Platforms:

Webapps: Yes

Windows MFC: Yes

.Net Winforms: Unmentioned

.Net WPF: Unmentioned

PowerBuilder: Yes (out of date)

PowerServer: No

PowerClient: No

OMNIS: No

Delphi: Unmentioned

Java Swing: Unmentioned

Terminal: Claimed

CEF/Electron: Unmentioned

MS Webview 2: No

PDF: No

Drag Generation of Actions:

via Dropdowns

Reusable Steps:

Yes

Scripting:

Not described

Parallel Execution:

Yes

Integrated Defect Tracking:

Yes

Test Localization:

Yes

Test Portability:

Manual Testing:

Test Management:

Additional product required

Test Execution Mgmt:

Integrated Version Control:

Integrated Test Data Management:

Yes

Automated testing, manual testing and test management tools that are easy to learn, easy to use, and easy to maintain.

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Pricing Plans - Solo Testers to Large Enterprise Teams

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Other Resources

Building Reusable Verification Tests

See How We Achieved an 83% Five Star Rating on Gartner

Eggplant

TestComplete

Tosca

Ranorex Studio

Features

Platforms

How We Compare

AscentialTest

Ranorex Studio

AscentialTest

TestComplete

AscentialTest

Eggplant

Main Links

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Get In Touch

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Loop Software

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Custom Objects

Test Debugger

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Pricing Plans - Solo Testers to Large Enterprise Teams

Subscription

Subscription

Subscription

Perpetual License

Perpetual License

Other Resources

Building Reusable Verification Tests

See How We Achieved an 83% Five Star Rating on Gartner

Eggplant

TestComplete

Tosca

Ranorex Studio

Features

Platforms

How We Compare

AscentialTest

Ranorex Studio

AscentialTest

TestComplete

AscentialTest

Eggplant

Main Links

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Get In Touch

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