Very Computer

* It can do everything at the MSWindows 3.11/95/NT client
  (you may have to do some coding!)
* Record/replay is easy so you can find out what is happening
* It is a small investment compared with SQA, Mercury Interactive and
  similar tools
However, Visual Test is focussed on testing at the MSWindows level, SQA
and other tools may give you more in the test management, bug logging
area.
I used Visual Test to construct an acceptance test for a 3 tier
application (SAP). This involved simulating 700-800 clients across
LANs and WAN to UNIX application and database servers at speeds
of upto 1 transaction/client every 2 seconds. I used  windows 3.11
and  486/100 or better pcs with 6 to 8 SAP clients per pc. I suspect,
that with fast NT engines, this could be scaled up considerably.
So it is possible to do testing of the full 3 tier architecture
as well as unit testing of the client code. The usual unix, oracle
and network tools were available to us to determine load effects at
each point in the system.
It would be difficult within the VT environment to emulate the backend
and so allow testing of the client independently of the application
tier but I am not aware of any test tool that allows you to do that.
However, it is easy to develop tests in VT that fire transactions at
application servers without having the GUI/client stuff complete.
i.e. Make the same calls on RPC services as from Visual Basic.
Testing middle layer functions generally requires determining effect
on database. This can be achieved by using an enquiry transaction
from the application you are developing or accessing the ORACLE
database through a generic route from the client( like ODBC).
Hope this helps.
--
David French
Decision Support Services Limited

Tel : +64 4 233 1900 Mobile : +64 21 435 832 Fax : +64 4 233 1924