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I am doing a research on automated software and the development of such.

When thinking about automated testing it is required to have references of the UI present in your software, therefore one can make use of an object repository that contains references to elements on the UI it is supposed to run the automated test on.

TestComplete tells me it has a different approach and does not make use of such object repository, but of a name-mapping repository instead.

The Name Mapping repository stores all the objects of your tested applications that your automated tests use. For each object, the Name Mapping repository has an alias (a descriptive name used in tests), the object’s position in the application’s object hierarchy, the criteria by which TestComplete identifies the object in the application uniquely, and (optionally) an image ...

... The Name Mapping repository stores object identification information separately from tests making test maintenance easier. If your application changes, you will not have to change your tests. You will only have to update the Name Mapping repository.

Source: https://support.smartbear.com/testcomplete/docs/testing-with/object-identification/name-mapping/about.html

How exactly does this differ from a regular shared object repository?

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  • 1
    Amazing, new contributor and a -1 without any specific reason. I read the question standards and can't spot the flaw. Not an invitation to ask something again anytime soon
    – MwBakker
    Mar 13, 2020 at 15:01
  • 1
    Honestly, downvote-mancy is a bit pointless. There's nothing wrong with this question, and that will win out over time. The thing to remember is that this is a small community, with a tendency to be a bit sparing with the vote buttons, so downvotes are more obvious when they happen.
    – Kate Paulk ♦
    Mar 13, 2020 at 18:01
  • @KatePaulk Agree to it , I saw a question that initially started with 3 downvote and now has 28 upvotes ( the question about using Fibonacci number in agile effort tracking) I think even the voter should get negative marking if he downvotes without a proper comment
    – PDHide
    Mar 13, 2020 at 20:34
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    @PDHide I said not specific to testing. Here it is elsewhere on the network: pm.stackexchange.com/questions/4251/…. There are also dozens of posts elsewhere that OP could have found via a search engine of their choice (it's on Wikipedia, even: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fibonacci_scale_%28agile%29).
    – jonrsharpe
    Mar 14, 2020 at 8:37
  • 1
    @PDHide 10 years on SE and I did not know that lol.
    – corsiKa ♦
    Mar 14, 2020 at 18:50

1 Answer 1

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The TestComplete Name Mapping tool is an object repository.

The key difference that I know of is that the Name Mapping tool is minimalist - it does not include anything more than is necessary. It's possible to define objects in the Name Mapping tool with nothing more than the alias and the full path. For a website, that's approximately equivalent to defining that InputName is http.body.form1.input1 (except that the full path is likely to be much longer than that).

Every other object mapping tool I've worked with is maximalist - they store a whole lot of objects I don't directly interact with because those objects are higher in the tree than the object I'm actually interacting with. Unsurprisingly, that kind of object repository gets unwieldy a lot faster than the Name Mapping approach.

I've yet to find any object repository that's easy to update, although I admit it has been some time since I last investigated.

The short version

It's mostly marketing. The only real difference I know of is that TestComplete's tool usually stores a lot less information than the other tools I've worked with.

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  • "The TestComplete Name Mapping tool is an object repository." thank you for confirming this, but I need to put it in a paper and I can't find any source confirming this other than you and me so far.
    – MwBakker
    Mar 13, 2020 at 11:57
  • "anything more than is necesseary" but it keeps track of the position if the visual tree, which means it needs some sort of XML definition of the structure of this tree wont it? Isnt such XML part a lot more info?
    – MwBakker
    Mar 13, 2020 at 11:58
  • I honestly don't know the details of how it's implemented, but I do know it names the objects by their full tree path - using names if they're available, but if not, the standard input[1] and such will get used.
    – Kate Paulk ♦
    Mar 13, 2020 at 12:03
  • it's very confusing because a regular object repository would also require a piece of the visual tree to locate the object it is referring it to
    – MwBakker
    Mar 13, 2020 at 14:03

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