Introduction to the Silk Test Architecture

The normal use of an application is for one person to manipulate a keyboard and mouse to initiate application operations. The person is said to be interacting with the GUI (graphical user interface). During Silk Test tests, Silk Test interacts with the GUI to send operations to the application automatically.

Thus, Silk Test can simulate the actions of a person who is exercising all the capabilities of an application and verifying the results of each operation. The simulated user (Silk test) is said to be operating the application. The application under test reacts to the simulated user exactly as it would react to a human break. Silk Test consists of two different software components that run in separate processes:

Silk Test host software

The 4Test Agent software

Silk test host software

The Silk Test host software is the program you use to develop, edit, compile, run and debug your 4Test scripts and test plans. This manual refers to the system running this program as the host machine or the Silk Test machine.

The agent

The 4Test agent is the software process that translates the commands from your 4Test scripts into specific GUI commands. In other words, it is the Agent that actually manages and monitors the application it is testing. An agent can run locally on the host machine. In a network environment, any number of agents can run on remote machines. This manual refers to systems running remote Agents as target machines. This manual refers to systems running remote Agents as target machines. In a client / server environment, Silk Test controls the client application through an agent process that runs on each application’s machine. The application then controls the server as usual. Silk Test is also able to handle the GUI belonging to a server or to directly handle a database on the server by running scripts that send SQL statements to the database. These methods of direct manipulation of the server application are intended to support testing where the client application controls the server.