It is prety much known in the testing community that the biggest problem with test automation is that tests are too brittle. A little thing changes, and your test has to be reconstructed...and that is a real headache.
eValid has Adaptive Playback as a first line of "anti-brittleness" defense. That feature automatically finds where to do something that you recorded, even if the particular feature has moved around on the page. For this you don't have to do anything...it is built in and always turned ON.
But sometimes pages change is more problematic ways: not only do the locations of things change, but some of the structure above and below a critical area vanishes or is expanded.
In these cases what we recommend is to (a) find the section where there is a problem (you don't need to fix what works!), and (b) convert commands from native playback form to full structural form.
Here is a description of what
Structural/Algorithmic Testing is all about. More specifically, you can look at the page on
Structural Testing Technology Resources, where you can see all of the details of how this is done.
eValid Team