Desktop automation of c# applications

Question

I have a desktop application for which I need to automate the smoke test suite consisting of 30 odd test cases. An application consists of 3 screens with some buttons and data grid. Major work in this is to identify and verify the data in the data grids and clicking on some tabs and buttons.

I have done POC on the following tools :

1. Teststack.white
2. Winnium
3. TestComplete

First 2 tools are taking around 4 minutes to identify a single element in my application (couldn't find out why) TestComplete is perfect and is working seamlessly with my application, however, the cost is a huge angle associated with it.

Recently, I got to know about Sikuli as well. Is it a good idea to create the smoke pack with sikuli, I think a lot of flakiness would be introduced due to this? Also, any other tool that is successful in desktop automation?

Answer 1

I have had success in the past using AutoIT. Don't let the talk of their scripting language distract you though. It also comes with a DLL/COM to allow you to use virtually any high or low level code.

Answer 2

I have used Test Stack White sometime back to automate a Windows based application. It was really fast, efficient and did the job for me.

I was able to interact with 20-30 elements in my application with less than a minute time. So I think the performance issue you are facing is specific to your application and maybe you can tackle it with a better programming approach or with the help of a developer.

White is also very extendable and easy to use if you have coding knowledge.