What's New for Testing

For testers, there are many new features in Visual Studio 2010. You can now plan your testing effort. This includes creating test plans, test suites, test configurations, and test cases with individual test steps using the new application for testers called Microsoft Test Manager, as shown in the following illustration. These artifacts are now part of your team project.

As a tester, you benefit from being able to gather diagnostic information when you run tests and automatically add this information to a bug. You can collect details of the actions that are performed when you run a manual test case. These details can be used the next time to fast forward manual testing.

Three products provide testing functionality in Visual Studio 2010:

• Visual Studio Test Professional: This is primarily for the generalist tester who wants to create manual test cases, run these tests and view the results as part of a test plan. This SKU includes the new application called Microsoft Test Manager. This SKU can be installed quickly and easily on the test machine where the tester wants to run their tests. You can also run automated tests from Microsoft Test Manager if an automated test is associated with a test case using functionality in one of the following two SKUs. 

  Note

  Visual Studio 2010 is not provided as part of the Test Professional. When you install Microsoft Test Manager as part of this SKU, .NET Framework version 4 is also installed.

• Visual Studio 2010 Premium: This provides the features to enable a user to create unit tests and UI automated tests for an application. The tests that are created can be run from Microsoft Visual Studio 2010, the command line, Team Foundation Build, or be associated with a test case and run from a test plan using Microsoft Test Manager.

  Note

  Microsoft Test Manager is not part of the Visual Studio 2010 Premium SKU.

• Visual Studio 2010 Ultimate: This contains all the test functionality provided for Visual Studio 2010. It includes Microsoft Test Manager providing the functionality for planning, creating, and running test cases. It also enables you to create and run unit tests, UI automated tests, load tests and Web performance tests, generic tests and ordered tests using Microsoft Visual Studio 2010. These automated tests can be run from Microsoft Visual Studio 2010, the command line, Team Foundation Build, or be associated with a test case and run from a test plan using Microsoft Test Manager.

  Note

  If you want to run load tests and simulate multiple users, you must also purchase virtual user license packs. For more information, see Configuring Test Controllers and Test Agents for Load Testing.

Additional software is provided for testing for Microsoft Visual Studio 2010. This software is called Microsoft Visual Studio Agents 2010. It is available on a CD or it can be downloaded. This provides software for test controllers, test agents, build agents and lab agents.

You can use test controllers and test agents with any of the following client editions:

• Visual Studio Test Professional

• Visual Studio 2010 Ultimate

• Visual Studio 2010 Premium

• Visual Studio Professional

You can use build agents with Team Foundation Server, or as part of the workflow capability for Visual Studio Lab Management . Lab agents are only used with Visual Studio Lab Management.

The tables below provide the following information:

• Summary of how the new features can help with your testing tasks

• Information about which new products you will need to accomplish these tasks

• Topics related to the testing tasks

Visual Studio 2010 Service Pack 1

Tasks	SKU required	Related topics
Re-targeting unit tests to use the .NET 3.5 framework: Visual Studio 2010 SP1 Beta adds basic support for unit tests that target the .NET Framework 3.5. As a result, you can now test SharePoint 2010 applications.	Visual Studio 2010 Ultimate or Visual Studio 2010 Premium Note You can also run unit tests with Visual Studio Professional.	Verifying Code by Using Unit Tests How to: Configure Unit Tests to Target .NET Framework 3.5
Coded UI testing support for Windows Internet Explorer 9: Coded UI tests now support Windows Internet Explorer 9 with some limitations.	Visual Studio 2010 Ultimate or Visual Studio 2010 Premium Note You can run automated UI tests using Visual Studio Test Professional.	Supported Configurations and Platforms for Coded UI Tests and Action Recordings

Visual Studio 2010

Tasks	SKU required	Related topics
Defining your testing effort: You can now define your testing effort for a specific iteration in your project by using a new application called Microsoft Test Manager. You can create test plans, test suites, test configurations, and test cases to define the testing required. You specify which test suites must be run on each test configuration. These testing artifacts are part of your team project. You can then select the tests you want to run from the test plan.	Visual Studio Test Professional or Visual Studio 2010 Ultimate	Defining Your Testing Effort Using Test Plans
Create and run manual tests: You can create test cases that contain individual test steps using Test Manager. Each manual test step includes an action to perform and can specify an expected result. You can run these tests and mark each step as passed or failed as you perform the actions on your application under test. You can also create shared steps that are common to multiple test cases, in order to reduce the time needed to create test steps, as well as the ongoing maintenance costs.	Visual Studio Test Professional or Visual Studio 2010 Ultimate	Creating Manual Test Cases Running Manual Tests Using Test Runner
Record manual test steps for playback: You can create recordings of actions you perform for a manual test case. You can play back this action recording to fast forward to a particular step in a manual test to verify a bug has been fixed, or you can use it to fast forward to save you time when you run a test.	Visual Studio Test Professional or Visual Studio 2010 Ultimate	Recording and Playing Back Manual Tests
Automated UI testing: You can now create automated UI tests, known as coded UI tests, using new automation libraries. You can import an action recording and generate code that represents your UI controls, or you can locate your UI controls and perform actions on them. You can then add validation code to verify that your application under test is working correctly.	Visual Studio 2010 Ultimate or Visual Studio 2010 Premium Note You can run automated UI tests using Visual Studio Test Professional.	Testing the User Interface with Automated UI Tests
Creating the environments you need to use for your testing: You can create both physical and virtual environments that define the set of roles required to run a specific application and the machines to be used for each role. Physical environments use test agent controllers associated with your Team Foundation Server and test agents to run your tests remotely and collect data. You can now create virtual environments for deploying and testing applications using Visual Studio Lab Management. You can use Hyper-V to create your virtual machines and use Systems Center Virtual Machine Manager to manage both your virtual machines and libraries of machine templates. When you create your test plan, you can select which environments and machines you want to use.	To create physical environments, you must have one of the following products: Visual Studio Test Professional or Visual Studio 2010 Ultimate You must also install test agents and test controllers, which are available from Microsoft Visual Studio Agents 2010. To create virtual environments, you must have one of the following products: Visual Studio Test Professional with MSDN or Visual Studio 2010 Ultimate with MSDN For the virtual machines that you create with Visual Studio Lab Management, you must install lab agents, test agents, build agents and test controllers as required from Microsoft Visual Studio Agents 2010.	Setting Up Test Machines to Run Tests or Collect Data Installing and Configuring Visual Studio Agents and Test and Build Controllers Using a Virtual Lab for Your Application Lifecycle
Collect diagnostic data or impact your system when testing and easily add collected data to a bug: When you run a manual test, you can optionally make a video recording of the test case or record the actions to a log file or create an action recording. You can add comments, screenshots, and other files as you run the test. You can also collect diagnostic trace data, called IntelliTrace data, code coverage data, or test impact analysis data for tests. You can have your machine emulate a specific network, or you can create your own custom data diagnostic adaptor. This data is saved with your test results. You can create a bug that is automatically populated with the data that you collected. This creates an actionable bug with detailed information for the developer to use to re-create and fix the issue.	Visual Studio Test Professional or Visual Studio 2010 Ultimate	Setting Up Machines and Collecting Diagnostic Information Using Test Settings Submitting Bugs
Finding tests to rerun based on code changes: You can compare builds to view which tests are recommended to be rerun, based on changes to your application under test.	Visual Studio Test Professional or Visual Studio 2010 Ultimate	Recommending Tests to Run That are Affected by Code Changes Determining Which Builds Have Bug Fixes, New Features, or Requirements
View reports to help you track your testing progress: You can view reports on your test case readiness and the testing progress for your test plan.	Visual Studio Test Professional or Visual Studio 2010 Ultimate Note You can also view reports using Team Explorer.	Reporting on Testing Progress for Test Plans
Group your automated tests by using test categories: You can now use test categories to group your automated tests. Test categories provide more flexibility than test lists for grouping your tests and selecting which tests to run.	Visual Studio 2010 Ultimate or Visual Studio 2010 Premium Note You can run automated test cases from the command line with test categories using tcm.exe with Visual Studio Test Professional.	Defining Test Categories to Group Your Tests How to: Run Test Cases with Automation from the Command Line Using Tcm
Run unit tests using a 64-bit process: You can also run unit tests and collect code coverage using a 64-bit process.	Visual Studio 2010 Ultimate or Visual Studio 2010 Premium Note You can also run unit tests using a 64 bit process with Visual Studio Professional.	How to: Run a Unit Test as a 64-bit Process
Test application performance and stress: You can use load tests to determine how well your application responds to various levels of usage. load tests can contain both unit tests and Web performance tests. The main purpose of a load test is to simulate many users accessing a server at the same time. A load test gives you access to application stress and performance data. A load test can be configured to emulate various load conditions such as user loads and network types. Both load testing and Web performance testing include several new features.	Visual Studio 2010 Ultimate	What's New for Web Performance and Load Testing

For more information about supported operating systems, see the following Microsoft Web site.

See Also

Concepts

What's New for Application Lifecycle Management in Visual Studio 2010