Automating regression testing on fat clients

Abstract: Regression testing is important but time consuming. Automating the testing have many benefits. It will save money for companies because they will not have to pay testers to manually test their applications. It will produce better software with less bugs as testing can be done more frequently so bugs will be found faster. This thesis has compared two techniques used to automate regression testing. The more traditional component level record and replay tools and Visual GUI testing tools that uses image recognition. Eight tools in total was tested and compared, four from each technique. The system under test for this project was a fat client application used by Trafikverket. After automating a test suite using all tools, it could be concluded that the component level record and replay had some advantages over visual GUI testing tools, especially when it comes to verifying the state of the system under test. The benefits of visual GUI testing tools comes from their independence from the system under test and that the technique more correctly mimics how a real user interacts with the GUI.