Since the 7.0.1 release of Rational Functional Tester, a very frustrating feature has crept in… the “Exception Window”. What happens is; whenever an exception occurs, instead of it being thrown and caught by standard try{...}catch(Exception e){} code, RFT pauses execution of the test, and displays the shiny new “Exception Window”. Whilst this has probably been included because it looks clever in product demos, it stands the idea of test automation on its head: If a test fails, that’s fine; just go on with the next one. If the test run pauses and doesn’t continue until a human “fixes” the problem, the benefits of automation are almost gone. After a bit of searching, here’s how to turn off this highly annoying feature:

com.rational.test.ft.util.OptionManager.set("rt.interactive", new Boolean(false));

Simple as that. Include that line early on in your test suite/framework setup code, and you’ll be rid of this daft new feature.