What is it?

Squish, by a company called Froglogic, is a rather impressive GUI testing tool.

It claims support for “all major GUI technologies” on “all desktop, mobile, web and embedded platforms”

We evaluated it for use in a Linux C++ Qt 5.5 project, so I can’t comment on “all GUI technologies” and “all platforms”, but rather just this specific case.

Our goal was to find a tool to perform automated acceptance tests for our product, and so we tried Squish for this purpose.

Its high-level list of features reads as follows:

• BDD – Behavior-Driven Development & Testing
• Recording and Playback
• Test Verification & Validation
• Powerful and Intuitive Test Creation Environment
• Multiple Real-World Scripting Languages
• Data-Driven Testing
• Distributed Batch Testing
• Extensive Integration Options
• Object Map & Object Identification Tools
• Hybrid Application Testing
• Visual Verifications

Our impression

We evaluated it for about two weeks, which means that we have no experience with large test sets or interesting special cases.

During our test, Squish presented itself as a very interesting and capable program. Its IDE is reasonably easy to use. Test cases should be developed with little effort. We were able to run them from the GUI or the command line, which is important for our intended inclusion into our CI system.

However, it’s pricy for what it truly offers, since I can cover most of its features using Open Source tools.

The only truly interesting feature for me was its “Object Map & Object Identification”, for which there seems to be no actual Open Source alternative (other than QT-Inspector, which one vcould presumably extend for use in scripts).

Everything else can also be accomplished using Open Source tools (and I suspect Squish uses lots of Open Source libraries under the hood, which is a good thing). Or is not worth using, such as its record/playback feature.

Discussion of Squish’s merits

I’m a bit confused by my own conclusion: I actually quite like the tool, but still don’t want to use it.

The reason comes down to price vs. (perceived) value. We were quoted over 11.000€ for our team of about 10 people.

If one will actually use many of its features, such as the GUI, it’s probably worth the money. It feels polished and well thought-out.

However since the only value it actually gives us is the GUI objects inspection, 11.000€ is just way too much to feel right.

Everything else I can set up using Open Source.

And I wouldn’t want to do that only to pinch pennies (they are my customer’s pennies, so why should I care), but to retain more control over my setup. If I assemble the components myself, I can debug or extend them much easier. I also have access to a much larger pool of resources on the Internet.

The conclusion

So, to sum up: it’s truly a nice product which I wouldn’t hesitate to recommend — but it isn’t for us.