this following response does not offer any solutions or suggestions merely observations


I did just want to add the we are experiencing a similar dilema with respect to testing VFP applications. With the active accessibility interface included in VFP 7.0 it was touted as the way that automated testing could be brought to VFP apps. Unfortunately not a single commercially available test suite supports active accessibility - as far as we have been able to locate (and if one does exost please please let me know). I do realise that Visual Test did support it (of a fashion) but since Rational purchased Visual Test it became a sunset product and as such no development effort has been put into it to enhance the haphazard way that the interface was exposed and utilized. The upshot was that the test rig was less reliable/stable than the software it was supposed to test. The only tool that comes remotely close to being useful is FoxRunner but this has the downside of only working with VFP and defeats the purpose of seeking an enterprise wide testing solution - each development team may need to use a different test platform and there is no benefit of shared experience.

With all of the exciting new features available in VFP the more exposure and use it gets in the market-place (particular in the business tier) it staggers me to think that all this software has been released with no third-party tool available to test it, it is in my opinion an enormous gap in the VFP SDLC. If I am wrong I am happy to be corrected but if other people share this view we need to put some pressure somewhere to try and get the situation addressed.

I too have responded with "no formal testing" which equates in many business minds to "no testing" which I'm sure you would all agree is simply not wise in this day and age.