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abinash11's avatar
abinash11
Occasional Contributor
7 years ago
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Host Verification Failed: Invalid address

I have been trying to use the Distributed testing option in Test Complete. Just with most other features with this tool, it has been made as difficult as possible to do basic tasks with so many settings, network suite, jobs etc. I followed the laundry list of checkpoints mentioned in the "Distributed Testing - Requirements" section in the help file. But still no success.

 

They ask you to disable group policy in the domain. Seriously ? Do the developers of this tool live in the real world ?

 

Why cant you provide a simple interface to run the tests by giving the Credentials and IP address etc. ? And why cant you provide a tool yourself if so many settings are required. Do you at least look into other tools in the market before coming up with impractical stuff ? I have been using this tool for the past 2 months and frankly, every feature is irritating with a crappy interface or so many settings that you end up kicking yourself for spending so much money. 

 

I may be ranting but this is the most expensive unworkable test automation tool that I have come across. Looks like developed by some startup with no market research etc.

 

  • abinash11's avatar
    abinash11
    7 years ago

    As I said, in the real world. getting IT department to create separate policies for QA and other users does not happen or it happens rarely, especially in the age of ultra security. Never happened in more than 5 companies that I have seen.

     

    Besides, there are so many tools in the market which doesn't ask you to disable group policies etc. to run tests. Yes, there will usually be 2 or 3 things to set, but the requirements mentioned by TestComplete takes 3-4 hours for 1 test machine. Why can't they enable the Windows firewall rules during Installation ?

     

    Anyhow, I have moved the machine out of the domain to make it work for now. But some of the commentators here seem to be full of closed minds when it comes to new questions and doesnt seem to realize that TestComplete makes many easy things (that are guaranteed in other tools) difficult to implement and make one spend time on doing the workaround rather than creating automated tests.

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  • tristaanogre's avatar
    tristaanogre
    Esteemed Contributor
    7 years ago

    Perhaps if you explain what you're trying to do, some screenshots showing your setups, and some more information about the environment, we can help you figure it out.  This tool has been in development since at least the early 2000's (I've been using it for 16 years now).  Yes, it has a good bit of configuration, but there are plenty of folks who are using it successfully so there is some value there.

     

    Share what you can and we'll be more than happy to help.

  • AlexKaras's avatar
    AlexKaras
    Champion Level 3
    7 years ago

    Hi,

     

    > They ask you to disable group policy in the domain. Seriously ?

    Absolutely. And not because of their fad but because it is not possible to automatically open remote desktop session in Windows if Legal Notice is not disabled.

    All at all this is *your* test environment and this is *you* who is responsible for it and not for fun but in order to test the software for *your* company. So I would rather wonder if *your* IT and management leave in read world so that they do not differ between QA department and regular users...

    And as it was already said by Robert - the more actual details for the actual problem you provide, the more chances to get the piece of advice that will help to solve your given problem.

    • abinash11's avatar
      abinash11
      Occasional Contributor
      7 years ago

      As I said, in the real world. getting IT department to create separate policies for QA and other users does not happen or it happens rarely, especially in the age of ultra security. Never happened in more than 5 companies that I have seen.

       

      Besides, there are so many tools in the market which doesn't ask you to disable group policies etc. to run tests. Yes, there will usually be 2 or 3 things to set, but the requirements mentioned by TestComplete takes 3-4 hours for 1 test machine. Why can't they enable the Windows firewall rules during Installation ?

       

      Anyhow, I have moved the machine out of the domain to make it work for now. But some of the commentators here seem to be full of closed minds when it comes to new questions and doesnt seem to realize that TestComplete makes many easy things (that are guaranteed in other tools) difficult to implement and make one spend time on doing the workaround rather than creating automated tests.

      • tristaanogre's avatar
        tristaanogre
        Esteemed Contributor
        7 years ago

        I don't think it's that we have closed minds.  More that we recognize that this is a different tool than UFT/QTP or Eggplant or whatever you may be used to using: different tool, different architecture, different implied methodology.  You're using the tool so someone, somewhere, made the decision to use this tool over the others for some reason. Agreed, there are always improvements to be made to applications and tools and such (hence why SmartBear does let us users make and vote on feature requests), but going from one tool to another means learning how to do things differently...  writing code in Visual Studio, while it has some similarities, is different than writing code in NetBeans, and not just because the code language is different... and NetBeans is different than Eclipse...

         

        The architecture of launching a test from one machine to execute on another machine requires a variety of security setups, parameters, etc... Basically, TestComplete needs to create an RDP connection to that other workstation, verify that the TestComplete/TestExecute service and/or application is running, and then tell that other workstation to execute those commands.  In their development over the past number of years since the Network/Distributed testing feature has been added to TestComplete, the documented requirements were noted as necessity in order to make it work cleanly.

        As for QA environment as AlexKaras mentions... that's why it's a good idea to set up a different OU in your AD for your automation test machines that is different than the rest of your workstations and then limit access to those machines to the QA people who need access.  This allows you to set up custom machine and/or user group policies for those machines without compromising your corporate security.  This is what I've done at every job I've held... and it wasn't TestComplete at each one.  Just the simple task of manual testing means I need to have access and abilities on my test environment that no IT security professional would DREAM of giving me on my own workstation.  Compartmentalizing your "clean room" workspace for testing allows for this flexibility... as well as allows you to isolate those machines in other ways so that, if something should go horribly wrong there, you won't adversely impact the "real world". 

        I used to work in electronics manufacturing before I started pounding on test automation... and NEVER did we allow our QA lab to actually interact with the production line nor did it actually interact with the actual operations of the plant (e.g., automation/manual test environments separate from production environments and even separate from the workstations used for regular business like writing e-mails... don't want to use our "live" exchange server for testing applications that may crash the server).  We drew our samples from the production line and brought them into our lab (e.g., taking a release candidate from the developers and deploying in a test environment) and then ran our QC checks against those samples in a completely clean and isolated environment.  We even had further separation within our QA lab so that we would prevent cross contamination (e.g., load testing machines running performance tests are configured differently and isolated from functional regression so as the data from one would not pollute the other).

         

        What SmartBear suggests within their requirements is well within keeping of best practices regardless of whether or not you're in manufacturing or in software development.  You build your environments in such a way that you can control them according to the particular business needs without adversely impacting other environments. 

         

        Now... all that said, the offer still stands... if you need help getting this to work, we're more than happy to help.  Specific examples, questions, etc., would go a long way in getting you up and running.  But expecting TestComplete to act the same as UFT out of the box I don't think is going to happen any time soon.  There are ways of performing the same tasks but you may need to implement those tasks differently.