Recommendations for automated testing tools for Windows CE and PDA devices

Question

Is anyone out there aware of any good or even reasonable tools for automated testing on the Windows CE / mobile platforms. Potential tools that I am aware of include TestQuest, Countdown, SOTI pocket controller, and Eggplant. Are there any more that I have missed?

Alternatively, is anyone aware of a VNC or remote display tool for Windows mobile that replicates the Windows visual object hierarchy on the PC, rather than displaying the entire device as a single bitmap? If this could be done, mainstream desktop automation tools could be applied to Windows mobile.

N.B. I have already read this related question which is useful, but am looking for a viable off the shelf alternative. This post is following up on a number of related posts in the PDA/Embedded section of SQAforums.

Answer 1

Check Hopper, a test tool for Windows Mobile

Regards, tamberg

Answer 2

I realize that your question is directly "are there tools to do the automated testing on CE", but have you considered perhaps aiming your automation at a version of the app which can be accessed from a standard desktop environment? In this way, you are open to all of the standard automation tools.

For example, I have worked on a few projects where we needed to perform automated testing for the device. In all cases, the RF device was really just a web browser connecting to a web based app. The same URL and simple forms could be plugged into a standard desktop browser and be automated by any of the usual automation toolsets. Automation never replaces manual testing, so what we did on those projects was automate regression testing of the same web interface that was used by the RF devices, but still do some sanity manual testing directly on the devices.

Also, with regards to the VNC/bitmap issue, I've been down that road before and agree that it is a nightmare. Using standard desktop UI automation on a VNC bitmap is not only unreliable and unmaintainable, but slow - in most tools, the CPU churns away searching the entire bitmap from top left to bottom right for the desired image. Really really slow.