ThoughtWorks Announces Twist, Automated Functional Testing Platform

by Chris Sims on Oct 06, 2008 |

ThoughtWorks Studios has created Twist, an integrated development environment for functional testing of web and Java applications. The tool provides a single platform for documenting user stories, capturing executable requirements, developing, maintaining, running and reporting on functional tests. A free trial version of Twist is currently available for download and evaluation.

One of the main features of Twist is support for domain specific languages (DSLs). The idea is that engineers can create a relatively simple, English-like language, which business people can easily read, and perhaps even write. Martin Fowler, who works for ThoughtWorks, has had a lot to say about DSLs recently. The following screen capture shows how the lines of DSL, which appear as a bulleted list, map to the underlying test automation.

Twist Screen Capture

Twist is implemented on the Eclipse platform, and uses Selenium and Frankenstein to do the actual automation.

Twist uses tagging to help organize tests. It is possible to run subsets of tests, by filtering based on the tags associated with the tests. The tags associated with a test might indicate:

Type of test runs which should include the test - Regression, smoke, performance
Feature or functional area
Release
Platform

The product also includes reporting. When a test fails, twist provides a report that shows the entire failing scenario, a screen shot of the application under test, when the test failed, and a complete stack trace of failure reasons.

The following table shows the announced pricing.

Single User Pack	$1,000
5 User Pack	$2,500
10 User Pack	$4,500
20 User Pack	$8,000

Twist joins Mingle and Cruise in ThoughtWorks Studios' suite of products.

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Community comments

web or http? by Christopher Brind Posted

Re: web or http? by Ketan Padegaonkar Posted

web or http? by Christopher Brind

By web, you mean HTTP based applications right? That is, I presume it doesn't support Flex or RIA techs that don't necessarily depend on HTTP protocol other than to deliver the client?

Re: web or http? by Ketan Padegaonkar

Twist supports pluggable drivers. This means that you can use abbot, frankenstein for swing applications, or flash-selenium for RIA applications.

Basically you can plugin anything that has a java driver in order to test your application.