Simplify testing effort using Automated Testing
Automation Testing
The most-used approach to reduce time and boost the quality of testing is the software test automation process. Both of these factors are important in the software development life cycle. In addition, cost-effective testing using open source test automation tool can further benefit the overall test automation. Automation testing is a technique that uses an application to implement entire life cycle of the software in less time and provides efficiency and effectiveness to the testing software. Automated software testing is a process in which software tools execute pre-scripted tests on a software application before it is released into production. The main objective of automated testing is to simplify testing effort as much as possible with minimum set of scripts.
The key advantages to Automation Testing include:
- Saves time and money by making testing more efficient
- Increases test coverage because multiple testing tools can be deployed at once allowing parallel testing of different test scenarios
- Helps developers to find bugs and errors more quickly
- Improves testing accuracy compared to manual testing
- Reusability of test cases
- Easy and robust reporting
Need of Automation Testing?
Automation testing of a software is the best way to increase the effectiveness, efficiency and coverage of your software testing. Every software development group tests its products, yet delivered software always has some defects.
Manual software testing is performed by a human sitting in front of a computer carefully going through application screens, trying various usage and input combinations, comparing the results to the expected behaviour and recording their observations. Manual tests arerepeated often during development cycles for source code changes and other situations like multiple operating environments and hardware configurations.
An automated testing tool is able to playback pre-recorded and predefined actions, compare the results to the expected behaviour and report the success or failure of these manual tests to a test engineer. Once automated tests are created, they can easily be repeated and can be extended to perform tasks impossible with manual testing. Because of this, savvy managers have found that automated software testing is an essential component of successful development projects.
For example,
Suppose a software has come up with new releases and bug fixes, how will you ensure that the newly released software with bug fixes has not introduced any new bug in previous working functionality? So it’s better to test the software with old functionalities too. It is difficult to test all functionalities of the software manually every time with the addition of some bug fixes or new functionalities. It is better to test software every time by Automation testing technique using Automation Tool. It is effective in terms of cost, resources, time etc.
Testing Tools
Web testing tools:
Selenium – Selenium is a popular automated web-testing tool and helps you automate web browsers across different platforms. Selenium support largest browser vendors who have taken steps to make Selenium a native part of their browser.
SoapUI – SoapUI is a cross-platform functional testing tool. It has been specifically designed to help automatically test APIs such as SOAP and REST interfaces to ensure the interoperability of different applications.
GUI Testing tools:
eggplant– egg plant is a GUI test automation tool for professional software applications and enterprise teams. It is used to automate different application types, such as .NET, Java and Flash applications.
Test Complete– Test Complete is an automated testing tool for the Windows platform. It allows you to record, script and run GUI tests for applications built using different frameworks and languages, such as .NET or C++.
Unit testing Framework:
Junit– JUnit is a simple unit-testing framework to write repeatable tests in Java. JUnit has been important in the development of test-driven development and is one of the standard testing frameworks for Java developers.
TestNG– TestNG is a Java testing framework inspired by JUnit and NUnit and introduces some new functionalities that make it more powerful and easier to use. TestNG is designed to cover multiple categories of tests, including unit, functional, end-to-end and integration tests.
NUnit– NUnit is a unit-testing framework for all .Net languages. It was initially ported from JUnit to .NET and has been redesigned to take advantage of many .NET language features.
Performance testing
Jmeter- Jmeter is an open source software, Java application designed to load test functional behaviour and measure performance.
LoadRunner- LoadRunner is a software testing tool from Micro Focus. It is used to test applications, measuring system behaviour and performance under load.
Rational Performance Tester- Rational Performance Tester. Rational Performance Tester is a tool for automated performance testing of web- and server-based applications from the Rational Software division of IBM. It allows users to create tests that mimic user transactions between an application client and server.
Types of Testing Framework
A software framework is an abstraction in which software providing generic functionality can be selectively changed by additional user-written code, thus providing application-specific software. A test Automation Framework is a set of guidelines like coding standards, test-data handling, object repository treatment etc., which when followed during automation scripting produce beneficial outcomes like increase code re-usability, higher portability, reduced script maintenance cost etc.
Data Driven– Data driven automated testing is a method in which the test data set is created in the excel sheet, and is then imported into automation testing tools to feed to the software under test.
Keyword Driven Framework– Keyword driven framework is a type of Functional Automation Testing Framework, which is also known as Table-Driven testing or Action Word based testing. The basic working of the Keyword Driven Framework is to divide the Test Case in to four different parts. First is called as Test Step, second is Object of Test Step, third is Action on Test Object and fourth is Data for Test Object.
Hybrid Framework– Hybrid framework is the combination of data driven and Keyword driven. While developing framework sometimes we have to use both framework combination.
Conclusion
Successful test automation depends not only on tools but also on a standard testing process and the right test team roles, duties and skills. Tools, process and test team are the three essential legs of the test automation. Moreover, the automation test team needs to have a blend of testing, programming, and tool knowledge. If an organization wants to reap the automation benefits promised by tool vendors, it needs to use the tool as a complement to manual testing. It also means adopting a strong test methodology and training the test team on the ins and outs of the selected tool in an organization’s unique development environment.
What’s best for ESDS ?
Automation testing plays a vital role in IT industry. ESDS involves in automation testing since 2 years in GUI functional testing and performance testing. Following are some features of Selenium, Jmeter and Jenkins testing tools:
Selenium
- Open source
- Multiple Language support
- Multiple Operating systems support
- Multiple Browser support
- Easy Implementation
- Reusability and Add-ons
Jmeter
- Open source
- Easy Implementation
- Multiple Browser support
Jenkins
- Open source
- Easy Installation
- It supports more than 1000 plug-in
- Platform Independent
- Simplify testing effort using Automated Testing - May 4, 2018
- Manual Testing – Process Lifecycle - May 4, 2018
