OpenText Silk Test Reviews

The ability to develop scripts in Visual Studio, Visual Studio integration, is the most valuable feature. 

The integration of the object library can be improved. It's a bit clunky. 

It also has some commands that are difficult to use sometimes. We work around its deficiencies and forget that it's a deficiency. 

They should extend some of the functions that are a bit clunky and improve the integration. 

If you use it inside Visual Studio, it is very stable. If it's not in Visual Studio, there are a lot of components to test. There are about ten different ways for it to be used. It's quite stable. 

Adding users into the database is straightforward. There are local limits that have to be managed which means you have to have a centrally deployed database. We have around ten users using this solution. They're all professional test automators. 

Technical support is very responsive. They'll get back to you quickly. They fix the issue in a manageable timeframe. They get back to you quickly and intend to work carefully with you. Silk Test support has always been and continues to be very good. 

The difficulty of the integration will depend on whether you are using it as a single user or as a part of a community of users. Integrating for a single user is very simple. If you use it as a part of a community of users you have to understand the SQL setup. It's a little bit more difficult. 

Single user deployment will take around five minutes. The best way to use it is with a central database so lots of people can use it. You have to structure the database and your projects carefully. It's not straight out of the box. You have to do a lot of thinking about how the products and projects are structured in the database. 

The product is very good and I would recommend it. You should make sure that it works with the technology you're testing. Some technologies have very particular functionality and methods of delivering that functionality. You have to make sure that it's compatible otherwise you will always be trying to work around it. 

The Silk Test community of users is quite small. You need to find people who are experienced with Silk Test or take QFT or UFT users and cross-train them. They're not a huge community of users. You have to be careful about who you put on the products and make sure they are well versed in the product you use. Once you know how to use it, it's great but there is a bit of a learning curve. 

I would rate it a seven out of ten. I give it this rating because it does not have a big community of users and because it takes a while to understand it. In order to get the full benefits, you have to be a good scripter or coder. It's not for the fainthearted but once you get it, it's great. 

We predominantly use the solution for network performance testing. We are currently deploying a solution to various countries in Africa, so we're predominantly using it for current applications. 

The feature I like most is the ease of reporting. One gets a single frame of reporting across all the various tests. The program is very user-friendly.

The pricing is an issue, the program is very expensive. That is something that can improve.

In my opinion the program is very stable.

We currently have 23 users who are all quality control testers, and I believe the program is fairly simple to scale.

We've had our ups and downs using the program but the technical support is okay and I am happy with it.

The initial setup was fairly simple but quite stressful. It's supposed to support the strategy but as soon as you know what you're doing, it becomes easier.

Overall it is a good tool to use. We just need to get somebody in our company that can use it to its fullest extent and uses it in a piecemeal fashion. In the next release, I would like to see easy integration into other tools like Tosca and ALD Suite and to become the master. And I know everybody says they can do it, but I would like to be the master of masters. The ultimate one. I will rate this program seven out of ten simply because I would never give a product a ten.

The OCR recognition is great, way over Sikulix or Robot Framework. I also like the fact that the integration with IE works great.

The KDT implementation seems to be pretty stable and easy to use, out of the box.

No, I can't, since we've not implemented this for anything but that evaluation task / proof of concept.

• Implementing integration with IntelliJ IDEA, since it's a way better IDE compared to Eclipse, in my opinion.
• Implementing a better integration with Git. It was extremely painful to implement the link from Silk Central to Git. I couldn't do it with a self-signed certificate implementation of Git, such as the one we use within our organization.
• Improve integration with Maven and Gradle.
• Since I create KDT files locally, I am expecting they get uploaded / visible within Silk Central. Actually, I had to rebuild all of the KDT scenarios on the Silk Central machine. This turns out to be a huge overhead - syncing is also a huge pain with Git.

One month evaluation task for a client that had specifically requested this tool for web, desktop, mobile automation. The client had used this for many years in his organisation and wanted to add more resources.

None that I can think of. I had some issues related to Chrome, but that's something I had also encountered previously, in the Selenium world.

This was not the case for the short time we'd used this.

Since we only evaluated, we only used was the online documentation. That was useful I believe. Can't say anything about email / call-center, since I haven't used it.

Yes, we've used Maven / Gradle frameworks with Selenium + Java with TestNG/ReportNG, Cucumber, JBehave, Serenity BDD, and we've run these frameworks through Git/GitHub/BitBucket/Stash into Jenkins. We've used this for UI, SOAP API, REST API, and DB testing.

While I can't say that the setup was complex, the integration with Silk Central / Git was particularly painful, especially due to the fact that the fields in Silk Central have weird naming that don't sound identical to the naming used by Git/GitHub repos.

I don't know, we used an evaluation version. It would be a good option for a project that required desktop automation, maybe my first option, over QTP / UFT.

This project specifically required Silk Test, so there was no prior evaluation from our side.

Don't be afraid to try it since it's an extremely powerful tool, but be patient and call the tech help desk for support. Also, post your findings online for others to help or get help.

• GUI Mapping
• 4Test

It speeds up testing efforts.

GUI interface could be simpler for non-developers.

10 years.

No issues with deployment.

No issues with deployment.

8 out of 10.

7 out of 10.

MI's Winrunner.

It was a straightforward set-up.

Initial cost was very high, took two years to save up for it. Wish Borland's Silk was less expensive.

Yes, several free and several paid. Amongst others, we looked at Selenium, Ranorex, WTP, Rational, MI, Auto-it, and Jmoeter.

Don't just research the automation tool, research what your needs are.

The most valuable features for us are the Classic agent for desktop and the Open agent for IE. It also support the languages Java and C.

It's easy to use and good for regression and sanity testing.

SilkTest has to improve on Firefox and Chrome as their versions change.

We've been using it for five years.

Less issues with the Classic agent, but with the Open one we have faced some issue.

Less issues with the Classic agent, but with the Open one we have faced some issue.

It's good.

It's good.

We did have a solution previously.

It was straightforward.

We did it in-house.

SilkTest is best for desktop applications and good for web applications also with the Open agent.

The web browser testing is very useful for applications with lots of Java script and application using Google on-line tool kit. Also, user based licence arrangements are best to suit organisation with budgeting constraints.

Not many performance Testing tool provides end to end response times for scripts running on the page, this tool is capable of providing end to end real time browser response times.

The browser based testing needs to be improved.

We've used it for three months.

No issues encountered.

No issues encountered.

No issues encountered.

10/10

10/10

We switched as not many tools allow browser based testing as Borland SilkTest does.

It was straightforward.

It was done by a vendor.

You pay per day for a licence based on the number of users.