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

It’s Finally Here: A Custom Elements Kit for Automated Testing

We started with Omnis and will be working with many other IDEs in the future. Also – if you have developed your own custom elements, this will open the door to automated testing! Why Automated Testing Tools Don’t Work With Custom Elements Automated testing tools work with the window manager to locate and recognize application […]

PowerBuilder App Testing: What To Know, Which Tools Work

It Starts with Recognition of the DataWindow As the PowerBuilder community knows, the datawindow is the foundation of all PB applications. It can be rendered in an array of presentation styles including Composite, CrossTab, Form, Grid, Group, Label, N-Up, Tabular or Tree. It’s a complex windows element that presents data stored in an underlying database. […]

A Thousand G2 “Dislikes” (Part 2): Testing Tools Have Speed Issues

Table of Contents Some Typical Complaints – Real Examples Based on our survey of over a thousand G2 reviews on automated software testing tools, we found that users complain a lot about test execution speed, and with good reason, because the speed of execution can have a significant impact on testing cycles and an organization’s […]

A Thousand G2 Reviews Later: Software Testing Tools Are Too Expensive

Table of Contents Apparently, Commercial Software Testing Tools are Too Expensive What a Thousand G2 “Dislikes” Taught Us Over the last few weeks, we analyzed over a thousand reviews entered into the “Automated Software Testing” category on the G2 website. While we prefer relying on Gartner Reviews (they tend to be a little more comprehensive), […]

Build Tests, Not Frameworks

Table Of Contents First Rule of Frameworks: Don’t Talk About Frameworks The topic of Test Automation Frameworks gets broad-brushed by testing solution companies because they know that there is a significant level of effort involved in building them and that translates to time and cost for the user organization, reducing the return on investment (ROI). […]

AscentialTest Error Tracking and Debugging

Introduction Tracking test failures can be challenging whether the source of the error is in the target application or in the test itself. The techniques described in this paper will help you locate the source of those errors. Step Run: The Step Editor contains a ‘Run’ button in the lower portion of the panel, allowing […]

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What We Are Up To Next

TFS/Azure Integration

Check our new Azure extension for executing AscentialTest command lines in the Azure Marketplace.

We look forward to offering additional integration with Microsoft’s Team Foundation Server and Azure through defect tracking and version control soon.

Omnis Studio

Automated testing support for OMNIS Studio is coming soon. All OMNIS elements will be supported including complex grids, list boxes, tables and tree views.

Custom Objects

Add automated testing support easily for your custom application elements by responding to simple test API messages with json strings. This feature will open up the possibility of testing any GUI element and  will be offered free of charge.

Test Debugger

Set breakpoints in your automated tests, view global and local variables and execute statements to make it easier to debug tests running on any of our supported platforms.

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