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, March 25, 2025 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

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Features

Object Recognition

AscentialTest recognizes application elements regardless of complexity without coding hacks or reliance on fragile OCR

Drag & Drop

Creating tests with our drag & drop editors is faster and more efficient than recording or scripting

Reusable Elements

Reuse promote faster building and maintenance of tests

No More Test Frameworks

Stop creating test frameworks and focus on your testing

Test Management Tools

Testing projects can get messy without good management tools

Complex Objects

Let AscentialTest do the heavy-lifting when it comes to tables, grids and trees

Integrations

Testing productivity involves meaningful integration with collaboration tools

Powerbuilder Expertise

We are the recognized go-to testing platform for PowerBuilder, we cover PB v6.x all the way to the current version.

Platforms

PowerBuilder

Web Apps

.Net

Omnis

Terminal

PDF

API Testing

Primary Features

Over the last 20 years, we have developed what we view as the most productivity-focused feature set of any automated software testing platform. Easy to learn, easy to use and easy to maintain.

Object Recognition
Drag & Drop
Reusable Elements
No More Test Frameworks
Test Management Tools
Complex Objects
Integrations

Object Recognition

Why it’s Important

Object recognition is the foundation of GUI test automation. Object-action based tests rely on stable definitions of all application elements especially complex tables and grids.

How We Address It

The patented AscentialTest Snapshot displays a document-object-model that enables stable recognition of all application elements regardless of their relative position in the object hierarchy.

How Others Do It

Other tools recognize each object by its full path in the object hierarchy. Future changes in the target application GUI will break object definitions requiring changes to path/locator to resolve recognition problems.

Why Our Approach is Better

Changes in object hierarchy in the future have no impact on object recognition whatsoever.

Let Us Show You in 2 Minutes

Drag & Drop

Why it’s Important

Testing productivity is about time, cost and level of effort to develop and maintain tests utilizing the skills of the existing test team.

How We Address It

The patented AscentialTest snapshot provides a way to generate object definitions and object-actions by dragging and dropping. The AscentialTest UI is designed so that project components are within easy reach to enable drag & drop to build tests from reusable steps, to bind test data to tests and to bind tests to test plans.

How Others Do It

Tools that rely on recorders to generate object-actions look great in a demo but when you actually try to use one, you find out that the recording requires a lot of time-consuming editing, requiring a long chain of user actions to select values from dialogs loaded with text fields and dropdowns. Other test solutions that rely on scripting require special skill sets and long learning curves.

Why Our Approach is Better

Building test automation through Drag & Drop reduces the learning curve, does not require a specialized skill set and provides the fastest, most efficient way to build robust automated tests.

Let Us Show You in 2 Minutes

Video will show D&D quickly through the entire process of defining objects, creating a step and parameterizing it, building test, binding a data table, binding to a plan and building a test set.

Reusable Elements

Why it’s Important

Test maintenance is the most important consideration when evaluating a testing solution. In our years of consulting work, we discovered that teams were spending as much time keeping tests up to date as it took to build them in the first place. Clearly the return on investment was being lost with every change cycle.

How We Address It

We recognize that tests need to be built on a stable foundation. Our object and step libraries provide a single point of change to maintain tests when there is a change to the business or application logic of the target application. In AscentialTest objects, steps, tests and test data are all reusable.

How Others Do It

While there is a smattering of reuse employed by many of the competing solutions, we have not seen any other solution that allows a single point of change for objects, steps, tests and test data.

Why Our Approach is Better

Because objects, steps, tests and test data are reusable, there are fewer components to build and maintain. Changes to the target application will result in the fewest possible changes to the testing project so that test are quickly and easily modified and ready to run when you need them.

Let Us Show You in 2 Minutes

Video will show how to change an object definition, how to change a step and how to refactor a name change

No More Test Frameworks

Why it’s Important

Time should be focused on building tests that validate the target application, not on test frameworks which can take weeks or months to build.

How We Address It

Based upon information captured from the target application along with our class library, AscentialTest automatically builds pre-test and post-test actions as part of the Test Class from which every test inherits. Users can add actions to customize for the target application.

How Others Do It

Other solutions require a framework to be developed and then implemented for each test.

Why Our Approach is Better

The AscentialTest Test Class ensures that every test is independent, starting and stopping from known ‘base states’, so that a failure in a test will not produce a domino effect where all subsequent tests fail.

Let Us Show You in 2 Minutes

Video will show how appstate is automatically generate and how OnFinish is configured with Close Windows function.

Test Management

Why it’s Important

Over time, testing projects might contain thousands or tens of thousands of tests. Good management tools are needed to keep track of test components, provide a way to locate those components and integrate the pieces together seamlessly.

How We Address It

AscentialTest includes all the test management features that you need to inventory, track and integrate steps, tests, test plans and test data tables.

How Others Do It

Most other testing solutions require the purchase of additional tools that are either part of suite or from third parties where integration is cumbersome.

Why Our Approach is Better

Built-in test management increases productivity by speeding up the process of building and executing tests which reduces the duration of test cycles and increases the probability of meeting project target dates.

Let Us Show You in 2 Minutes

Video will show Test Plan with Find Tests, Attributes and Data Table integration. It will also show TestSet with results and reporting

Complex Objects

Why it’s Important

Complex objects like tables, grids and trees exist in most target applications. Recognizing rows, columns and elements contained in cells is imperative. Likewise the ability to locate a row even when scrolled out of view is a basic requirement.

How We Address It

The AscentialTest class library contains in-built intelligence regarding the structure and behavior of the table family of elements. Whether the target application is DotNet, PowerBuilder, Terminal or Web, AscentialTest recognizes all of the element components. A unique action called a ‘selector’ locates a row by searching the table and finding a specified value.

How Others Do It

Other solutions require some combination of OCR, image recognition or a lot of coding in order to make sense of a complex object and interface with it at the row and column level.

Why Our Approach is Better

The AscentialTest table interface allows users to select, input or edit rows in complex objects using drag & drop as seamlessly as interfacing with a simple edit field without any coding.

Let Us Show You in 2 Minutes

Video will include drag and drop definition of PB and DotNet tables and the webtable wizard. It will also demonstrate how selectors are used to locate rows.

Integrations

Why it’s Important

Testing tools don’t exist in a vacuum. The ability to interface smoothly with version control, defect tracking and continuous integration impacts tester productivity.

How We Address It

AscentialTest integration for version control and defect tracking is built right into the User Interface. Users can acquire locks and commit changes from the Project Explorer. Changes in defect status automatically mark tests to be run when bugs are fixed. Plug-ins are available for popular CI tools.

How Others Do It

These features are lacking in most testing tools. Other solutions provide lose integration with collaboration tools often using the Windows File Manager.

Why Our Approach is Better

Productivity is increased when users can access integration with collaboration features from within AscentialTest.

Let Us Show You in 2 Minutes

Video will demonstrate lock and commit with Subversion integration and Mark tests by change in status from Jira integration.

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Building Reusable Verification Tests

Eggplant

TestComplete

Tosca

Ranorex Studio

Primary Features

Object Recognition

Let Us Show You in 2 Minutes

Drag & Drop

Let Us Show You in 2 Minutes

Reusable Elements

Let Us Show You in 2 Minutes

No More Test Frameworks

Let Us Show You in 2 Minutes

Test Management

Let Us Show You in 2 Minutes

Complex Objects

Let Us Show You in 2 Minutes

Integrations

Let Us Show You in 2 Minutes

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What We Are Up To Next

TFS/Azure Integration

Omnis Studio

Custom Objects

Test Debugger