Discovery of a Peculiar Bug in QTP Analog Recording

I take an opportunity of sharing my discovery of a new Bug in QTP with my esteemed readers. I discovered it while doing an Analog recording.

Prior to the explanation of the bug let us see the overview of the Analog Recording process according to the QTP 9.2 help file.

According to the "Guidelines for Analog and Low Level Recording" section in the QTP 9.2 help file, you will find that there are two types of Analog Recording modes:

1. Record relative to the screen
2. Record relative to a specified window

Record relative to the screen option is used when you intend to perform operations on objects in either a moving window or if you have objects across multiple windows. Also, the HP Quicktest Professional (QTP) Software captures only the Active Screen image of the final state of the window, which you just recorded.

Record relative to a specified window is used when you intend to perform operations on objects which are present in a single window only. Also HP QuickTest Professional does not capture any Active Screen images in this case.

Now coming back to the bug which happens to be the most funny part as well. The event happens to occur the other way round in case of capturing the Active screen images. What actually happens is that QTP is capturing the Active Screen image in case of "Record relative to a specified window" option as against for "Record relative to the screen" option.

The illustration of the bug goes like this: Let us go by a very simple example being presented herewith.

Open the Command prompt by navigating to Start->Run. Type "cmd" and press the return key.

After opening the command prompt, please follow the below mentioned steps to reproduce this error.

Step – 1: Click on the record button inside QTP and then Click on the "OK" button on "Record and Run Settings" dialog box.

Step – 2: After executing Step1, Analog recording button must be activated in the Automation toolbar. Click on the Analog Recording button. You will see the following screen:



Step – 3: Keep the default option "Record relative to the screen" option selected and click on the "Start Analog Record" button.

Step – 4: Move your mouse inside the command prompt window and click anywhere inside it to make this window active and type any text for example "xyz".

Step – 5: Stop the recording by clicking on the "Stop" button inside QTP.

Step – 6: Click on View->Active Screen.

Now as per the HP Quicktest Professional Help file, the active screen should be displayed. Whereas the Output what I got is shown in the following screen shot with nothing in the Active Screen.



Pretty interesting, I must say.

Now lets try the above mentioned steps for "Record relative to the following window" option.

Execute all the above Six steps as it is, however, execute the Step - 3 in the following manner:

#####################################

Alternative way of Step – 3:

"Check the "Record relative to the following window" radio button and click on the hand icon on the right. Your cursor will change to a hand.

Now move this hand to the title bar of the command prompt and click on it.

With this step, QTP captures the command prompt title as shown in the following screenshot.



Click on the "Start Analog Record" button.
#####################################

After executing the above-mentioned steps, I got the following result as shown in the following screenshot.



This is the expanded view of the above screenshot:






Bug confirmed, Hence proved :)

How about reporting this bug to the HP customer support? Whose gonna take the initiative?

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Tags: HP QTP, Quicktest Professional, QTP Blog, QTP Bug, Bug inside QTP