Eggplant Functional was conceived by Doug Simons, Jonathan Gillaspie, and John McIntosh and first released in 2002 by Redstone Software. Unlike other automated software testing tools on this list, Eggplant Functional uses an image-based approach to testing, as opposed to looking at the tested application from the object perspective. This means that the technology used to build the tested application is irrelevant, as is the system on which the application runs.