Relevant for: GUI tests and components
When UFT One learns an object, it learns a set of properties and values that uniquely describe the object within the object hierarchy. In most cases, this description is sufficient to enable UFT One to identify the object during the run session.
If you find that the description UFT One uses for a certain object class is not the most logical one for the objects in your application, or if you expect that the values of the properties in the object description may change frequently, you can configure the way that UFT One learns and identifies objects. You can also map user-defined objects to standard test object classes and configure the way UFT One learns objects from your user-defined object classes.
UFT One has a predefined set of properties that it learns for each test object. If these mandatory property values are not sufficient to uniquely identify a learned object, UFT One can add some assistive properties and/or an ordinal identifier to create a unique description.
Mandatory properties are properties that UFT One always learns for a particular test object class.
Assistive properties are properties that UFT One learns only if the mandatory properties that UFT One learns for a particular object in your application are not sufficient to create a unique description. If several assistive properties are defined for an object class, then UFT One learns one assistive property at a time, and stops as soon as it creates a unique description for the object. If UFT One does learn assistive properties, those properties are added to the test object description.
If the combination of all defined mandatory and assistive properties is not sufficient to create a unique test object description, UFT One also learns the value for the selected ordinal identifier. For details, see Ordinal identifiers. If a specific test object relies mainly on ordinal identifiers, you can also define visual relation identifiers for that test object, to help improve identification reliability for that object. For details, see Visual relation identifiers.
When you run a test or component, UFT One searches for the object that matches the description it learned (without the ordinal identifier). If it cannot find any object that matches the description, or if more than one object matches the description, UFT One uses the Smart Identification mechanism (if enabled) to identify the object. In many cases, a Smart Identification definition can help UFT One identify an object, if it is present, even when the learned description fails due to changes in one or more property values. The test object description is used together with the ordinal identifier only in cases where the Smart Identification mechanism does not succeed in narrowing down the object candidates to a single object.
You use the Object Identification Dialog Box to configure the mandatory, assistive, and ordinal identifier properties that UFT One uses to learn descriptions of the objects in your application, and to enable and configure the Smart Identification mechanism. The Object Identification dialog box also enables you to configure new user-defined classes and map them to an existing test object class so that UFT One can recognize objects from your user-defined classes when you run your test or component.
