Automation Testing Tutorial: What is Automated Testing?

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What is Automation Testing?

Automation Testing or Test Automation is a software testing technique that performs using special automated testing software tools to execute a test case suite. On the contrary, Manual Testing is performed by a human sitting in front of a computer carefully executing the test steps.

The automation testing software can also enter test data into the System Under Test, compare expected and actual results and generate detailed test reports. Test Automation demands considerable investments of money and resources.

Successive development cycles will require execution of same test suite repeatedly. Using a test automation tool, it's possible to record this test suite and re-play it as required. Once the test suite is automated, no human intervention is required. This improved ROI of Test Automation. The goal of Automation is to reduce the number of test cases to be run manually and not to eliminate Manual Testing altogether.

Automated Testing

In this automated software testing tutorial, you will learn-

Why Test Automation?

Why Automated Testing?
Why Test Automation?

Test Automation is the best way to increase the effectiveness, test coverage, and execution speed in software testing. Automated software testing is important due to the following reasons:

  • Manual Testing of all workflows, all fields, all negative scenarios is time and money consuming
  • It is difficult to test for multilingual sites manually
  • Test Automation does not require Human intervention. You can run automated test unattended (overnight)
  • Test Automation increases the speed of test execution
  • Automation helps increase Test Coverage
  • Manual Testing can become boring and hence error-prone.

Which Test Cases to Automate?

Test cases to be automated can be selected using the following criterion to increase the automation ROI

  • High Risk - Business Critical test cases
  • Test cases that are repeatedly executed
  • Test Cases that are very tedious or difficult to perform manually
  • Test Cases which are time-consuming

The following category of test cases are not suitable for automation:

  • Test Cases that are newly designed and not executed manually at least once
  • Test Cases for which the requirements are frequently changing
  • Test cases which are executed on an ad-hoc basis.

Automated Testing Process:

Following steps are followed in an Automation Process

Step 1) Test Tool Selection

Step 2) Define scope of Automation

Step 3) Planning, Design and Development

Step 4) Test Execution

Step 5) Maintenance

Test Automation Process
Test Automation Process

Test tool selection

Test Tool selection largely depends on the technology the Application Under Test is built on. For instance, QTP does not support Informatica. So QTP cannot be used for testing Informatica applications. It's a good idea to conduct a Proof of Concept of Tool on AUT.

Define the scope of Automation

The scope of automation is the area of your Application Under Test which will be automated. Following points help determine scope:

  • The features that are important for the business
  • Scenarios which have a large amount of data
  • Common functionalities across applications
  • Technical feasibility
  • The extent to which business components are reused
  • The complexity of test cases
  • Ability to use the same test cases for cross-browser testing

Planning, Design, and Development

During this phase, you create an Automation strategy & plan, which contains the following details-

  • Automation tools selected
  • Framework design and its features
  • In-Scope and Out-of-scope items of automation
  • Automation testbed preparation
  • Schedule and Timeline of scripting and execution
  • Deliverables of Automation Testing

Test Execution

Automation Scripts are executed during this phase. The scripts need input test data before there are set to run. Once executed they provide detailed test reports.

Execution can be performed using the automation tool directly or through the Test Management tool which will invoke the automation tool.

Example: Quality center is the Test Management tool which in turn it will invoke QTP for execution of automation scripts. Scripts can be executed in a single machine or a group of machines. The execution can be done during the night, to save time.

Test Automation Maintenance Approach

Test Automation Maintenance Approach is an automation testing phase carried out to test whether the new functionalities added to the software are working fine or not. Maintenance in automation testing is executed when new automation scripts are added and need to be reviewed and maintained in order to improve the effectiveness of automation scripts with each successive release cycle.

Framework for Automation

A framework is set of automation guidelines which help in

  • Maintaining consistency of Testing
  • Improves test structuring
  • Minimum usage of code
  • Less Maintenance of code
  • Improve re-usability
  • Non Technical testers can be involved in code
  • The training period of using the tool can be reduced
  • Involves Data wherever appropriate

There are four types of frameworks used in automation software testing:

Types of Automated Testing

How to Choose an Automation Tool?

Selecting the right tool can be a tricky task. Following criterion will help you select the best tool for your requirement-

  • Environment Support
  • Ease of use
  • Testing of Database
  • Object identification
  • Image Testing
  • Error Recovery Testing
  • Object Mapping
  • Scripting Language Used
  • Support for various types of test - including functional, test management, mobile, etc...
  • Support for multiple testing frameworks
  • Easy to debug the automation software scripts
  • Ability to recognize objects in any environment
  • Extensive test reports and results
  • Minimize training cost of selected tools

Tool selection is one of biggest challenges to be tackled before going for automation. First, Identify the requirements, explore various tools and its capabilities, set the expectation from the tool and go for a Proof Of Concept.

Automation Testing Tools

There are tons of Functional and Regression Testing Tools available in the market. Here are best tools certified by our experts

  1. Ranorex Studio

Ranorex Studio is an all-in-one tool for automating functional UI tests, regression tests, data-driven tests and much more. Ranorex Studio includes an easy to use click-and-go interface to automate tests for web, desktop, and mobile applications.

Features:

  • Functional UI and end-to-end testing on desktop, web, and mobile
  • Cross-browser testing
  • SAP, ERP, Delphi and legacy applications.
  • iOS and Android
  • Run tests locally or remotely, in parallel or distribute on a Selenium Grid
  • Robust reporting

Learn More

  1. Testim

Testim is the fastest path to resilient end-to-end tests—codeless, coded or both. Testim lets you create amazingly stable codeless tests that leverage our AI, but also the flexibility to export tests as code. Customers like Microsoft, NetApp, Wix, and JFrog run millions of tests on Testim each month

Features

  • You can leverage Testim's modern JavaScript API and your IDE to debug, customize or refactor tests.
  • Store test in your version control system to keep them in sync with branches and run tests on every commit.
  • Integration with popular tools

Learn More

  1. 21

21 is a sophisticated, self-learning test automation and analytics platform for iOS and Android applications.

Features:

  • Fast and intelligent authoring - AI assisted authoring empowers users to create automated functional and UI tests in minutes.
  • Results you trust - Seamless algorithmic locators system ensures stable results across all frameworks.
  • Eliminate maintenance and flaky results - self-learning maintenance autonomously updates tests and assures your team can focus on developing new features, while relying on test results.
  • Release with confidence - Production integration closes the feedback loop and analyze actual coverage. Use data when releasing.
  • Fully SaaS, requires no installation or devices to create or execute tests. Offers access to dozens of devices seamlessly.

Learn More

  1. Selenium

It is a software testing tool used for Regression Testing. It is an open source testing tool that provides playback and recording facility for Regression Testing. The Selenium IDE only supports Mozilla Firefox web browser.

  • It provides the provision to export recorded script in other languages like Java, Ruby, RSpec, Python, C#, etc
  • It can be used with frameworks like JUnit and TestNG
  • It can execute multiple tests at a time
  • Autocomplete for Selenium commands that are common
  • Walkthrough tests
  • Identifies the element using id, name, X-path, etc.
  • Store tests as Ruby Script, HTML, and any other format
  • It provides an option to assert the title for every page
  • It supports selenium user-extensions.js file
  • It allows to insert comments in the middle of the script for better understanding and debugging

Download Selenium

  1. QTP (MicroFocus UFT)

QTP is widely used for functional and regression testing, it addresses every major software application and environment. To simplify test creation and maintenance, it uses the concept of keyword driven testing. It allows the tester to build test cases directly from the application.

  • It is easier to use for a non-technical person to adapt to and create working test cases
  • It fix defects faster by thoroughly documenting and replicating defects for developer
  • Collapse test creation and test documentation at a single site
  • Parameterization is easy than WinRunner
  • QTP supports .NET development environment
  • It has better object identification mechanism
  • It can enhance existing QTP scripts without "Application Under Test" is available, by using the active screen

Download QTP

  1. Rational Functional Tester

It is an Object-Oriented automated Functional Testing tool that is capable of performing automated functional, regression, data-driven testing and GUI testing. The main features of this tool are

  • It supports a wide range of protocols and applications like Java, HTML, NET, Windows, SAP, Visual Basic, etc.
  • It can record and replay the actions on demand
  • It integrates well with source control management tools such as Rational Clear Case and Rational Team Concert integration
  • It allows developers to create keyword associated script so that it can be re-used
  • Eclipse Java Developer Toolkit editor facilitates the team to code test scripts in Java with Eclipse
  • It supports custom controls through proxy SDK (Java/.Net)
  • It supports version control to enable parallel development of test scripts and concurrent usage by geographically distributed team

Download Rational Functional Tester

  1. WATIR

It is an open source testing software for regression testing. It enables you to write tests that are easy to read and maintain. Watir supports only internet explorer on windows while Watir webdriver supports Chrome, Firefox, IE, Opera, etc.

  • It supports multiple browsers on different platforms
  • Rather than using proprietary vendor script, it uses a fully-featured modern scripting language Ruby
  • It supports your web app regardless of what it is developed in

Download Watir

  1. SilkTest

Silk Test is designed for doing functional and regression testing. For e-business application, silk test is the leading functional testing product. It is a product of Segue Software takeover by Borland in 2006. It is an object-oriented language just like C++. It uses the concept of an object, classes, and inheritance. Its main feature includes

  • It consists of all the source script files
  • It converts the script commands into GUI commands. On the same machine, commands can be run on a remote or host machine
  • To identify the movement of the mouse along with keystrokes, Silktest can be executed. It can avail both playback and record method or descriptive programming methods to get the dialogs
  • It identifies all controls and windows of the application under test as objects and determines all of the attributes and properties of each window

Download SilkTest

Conclusion

The right selection of automation tool, testing process, and team, are important players for automation to be successful. Manual and automation methods go hand-in-hand for successful testing.

 

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