So.. I set up IE to use WebScarab as a proxy, and then logged into Quality Center. Lo and behold, the program uses HTTP to do all its communication with the server, and the all commands and responses are human-readable text. It ain't XML, it ain't JSON, but its human-readable and I'm pretty sure I could write it if I had to.
So.. is this protocol documented anywhere? Are you "supposed" to be able to use this? Anybody have any experience using it anyway?
And yes I am aware that they have a COM api, but I have a feeling that the crashy behavior I normally experience from QC is probably in the COM objects, so any software I might write that uses them would exhibit the same behavior.
The officially supported method for communicating with QC is via the published Open Test Architecture (OTA) API which is very well documented. I think you would have your work cut-out trying to re-write the API at a lower HTTP level. Lots of people are using the OTA API successfully to customise QC and write third-party extensions. Also many of the COM idiosyncrasies are now documented on the .NET. Maybe you can elaborate on the sorts of problems you are having with the COM API?