Mercury test tools or Rational test tools?

I've been using Rational test tools for quite sometime now (clearquest,
robot etc) but I've noticed that a lot more companies appear to be using
Mercury. What is the reason for this? I believe Mercury tools are cheaper
but not as powerful as the Rational tools. Is my assumption correct or has
Mercury really picked up in the last few years?

Young Man wrote:
> I've been using Rational test tools for quite sometime now (clearquest,
> robot etc) but I've noticed that a lot more companies appear to be using
> Mercury. What is the reason for this? I believe Mercury tools are cheaper
> but not as powerful as the Rational tools. Is my assumption correct or has
> Mercury really picked up in the last few years?

I think you've got to look at the market position that each company
took. Mercury went for the end user testing market and pitched a pure
testing focus play. Rational always positioned themselves as a software
development tools vendor and kind of threw in testing to complete the
picture of req->design->build->test hence they were never as focussed
on testing as Mercury. After the IBM deal, Rational just kind of
disappeared in testing in terms of looking for new business.

As far as cost/power of tools is concerned, it's about value not
cost/power. Value requires that you know the context, without that a
discussion is meaningless. Even if you just restrict the discussion to
cost alone you still can't draw any meaningful conclusions. IBM is now
a big player in the open source arena, and I believe that they have
embraced the concept quite honestly and with integrity. This is because
they really 'get it' with regards to open source software. Open source
is, in the words of the Eric S. Raymond's mantra "free as in speech,
not free as in beer". Free beer would be nice, but free speech is
better. We get a warm fuzzy feeling about our rights to free speech and
IBM keeps collecting on the 'beer'. But, just because you can talk
freely on a subject doesn't mean that you know anything of value ABOUT
that subject. Has anyone watched Fox News? QED.

Mark.

Young Man wrote:
> What is the reason for this?
Mercury declared themselves as 'market leader'.
So everyone had to buy their tools just to make it come true.
(Just kidding...)

Mercury tools are good and connected to each other. Simply working. They
have a responsive support. They solve their customers problems, not at
once, but they do.

> I believe Mercury tools are cheaper
> but not as powerful as the Rational tools.
The word 'cheap' does definitely not come into my mind regarding any
Mercury tools.
AFAIK they are more powerful than Rational tools, so its just the
contrary of what you supposed.
But this may depend on your needs.

> Is my assumption correct or has
> Mercury really picked up in the last few years?
They give out trial versions of whatever you may want to evaluate. Just
contact them and find out.

Wolfram

"Young Man" <gman@stuffer.com> wrote in
news:d7is59$pph$1@domitilla.aioe.org:

> I've been using Rational test tools for quite sometime now
> (clearquest, robot etc) but I've noticed that a lot more companies
> appear to be using Mercury. What is the reason for this? I believe
> Mercury tools are cheaper but not as powerful as the Rational tools.
> Is my assumption correct or has Mercury really picked up in the last
> few years?
>
>
>

My team has used Mercury Winrunner to create over 500,000 LOCC of TSL
test automation. However, I AM NOT a fan of Mercury-interactive.

Their sales reps are low-life shysters and their Tech Support is totally
worthless.

In fact we dropped our $50K a year maintenance contract since Mercury
support refused to assist us with much of anything!

My advice is STEER CLEAR of rip-off Mercury Interactive.

My team recently switched to Segue Silktest with .NET extensions for our
new product lines. Much, much better sales, support and tool!

Sincerely,

In my experience, I've been a lot happier with IBM tools.  We're using
Rational Functional Tester, and while it's still new, buggy, and rather
documentationless, i have grown fond of the tool.  The VB.net version
of it makes life easy since you can run it in visual studio.