Testing advantages of Premium over Standard

[Fletchgqc]

My company has recently decided to go for Flex 4 to build an app. We're fairly new to Flex and we're about to purchase FB4 licences. We're trying to decide whether to go for Standard or Premium licences.

Reading the feature comparison I see the difference is basically centred around testing. I have a few specific questions:

1. Premium has "FlexUnit support". What does that actually mean? As far as I can see flexunit is a free testing library (with a graphical display), so both versions should be able to run it. Does this simply mean that Premium will show the graphical display? Or what does premium specifically offer?
2. Premium has "Support for automated functional testing". On other pages I see the following mentioned "Support for automated functional testing tools such as HP QuickTest  Professional software is also available." This leaves me wondering - do I need to purchase the HP tool to get the functional testing support? Really I don't want to purchase any other tools, so what do I get out-of-the-box? I've had a search around but I don't see any tutorials on the web showing me how to use this feature of FB4. I'm currently using the trial Premium version, but I don't see any menus or buttons which sound promising (like "Create new functional test..."). Is there any information which can help me in using this feature? Lastly, can you give any info on how this might be better than using say Flex Monkey?

Thanks for any guidance and sorry for the quadruple-barrelled questions!

John

[captain_code-KOo9rr]

Personally I have found that the performance and memory profilers have been worth their weight in gold. Especially when building enterprise grade applications. I've never actually used the FlexUnit testing, so I can't help you there, but I thought I would weigh in about the profilers, as they can make a huge difference in your applications.

[ashorten_adobe · Accepted solution]

Hi John,

Thanks for your question about Flash Builder Premium.

Flex Unit support in Flash Builder relates to the following capabilities:

* Create unit test cases and unit test suites (Wizards guide you through the creation of test cases and test suites, generating stub code for the tests)

* Run the test cases and test suites in Flash Builder

* Navigate directly to source code from the Flex Unit Results View

You may find this article on the Adobe Developer Connection site useful: http://www.adobe.com/devnet/flex/articles/flashbuilder_tdd.html

In relation to support for automated testing, Flash Builder Premium comes with the required libraries for you to be able to use automated testing tools with your Flex application.

You will most likely want to use a third party tool, in addition to Flash Builder, to undertake automated functional testing. Information on the Flex plug-in for HP QuickTest Professional and supporting documentation is available here: https://www.adobe.com/cfusion/entitlement/index.cfm?e=flex4_automation_plugin

As someone else pointed out on this thread, another important tool included in Flash Builder Premium is the Profiler; you might also benefit from the Network Monitor (which enables you to watch network traffic between your Flex application and a remote server) in the Premium edition - more information on those features can be found in this article: http://www.adobe.com/devnet/flex/articles/flashbuilder4_debugging_profiling.html

I hope the above information helps with your decision.

Thanks,

Andrew

Senior Product Manager, Flash Builder