Requirements for automated testing tools

Automation Anywhere has a marketing twist when describing its a commercial automated test tool solution. The three main areas AA highlights for their product is:. SmartBear's TestComplete platform helps you create repeatable and accurate automated assurance tests across multiple devices, platforms, and environments quickly and easily.

The latest version of TestComplete is even better due to its support of Selenium WebDriver and unit testing. While not the most robust tool from all the other automated testing tools but many teams integrate AutoIt with Selenium to work around non-browser windows that appear in an automated test workflow. While most automated testing tools on this listed were created for functional testing Applitools was developed from the ground up, specifically for visual validation assurance.

In addition to validating that the UI displays the correct content or data, Visual Testing focuses on proving the layout and appearance of each visual element of the UI and the UI as a whole. Watir is an open-source Ruby library for automating tests. Watir interacts with a browser the same way people do: clicking links, filling out forms, and validating text.

PowerShell is a Microsoft product. While not usually considered in a list of automated testing tools I still consider this a viable option for DevOps based automation.

There is even a BDD framework for it called Pester that some teams love. They developed qTest Scenario with some essential team benefits in mind, like:.

Appium is a free, open-source, cross-platform UI mobile testing toolk. It also lets you create test scripts using the Selenium JSON writer you know and love from web automation assurance. Appium is becoming an industry standard for mobile testing, much as Selenium WebDriver became the standard for browser-based automation a few years ago. This mature product, created for testers, uses a keyword-driven approach to make tests readable and easy to create.

It also includes many test libraries and other tools you can use. In addition to all this open-source awesomeness, it has a lot of APIs that help make it as extensible as possible. The keyword approach used by Robot Framework is excellent for testers who are already familiar with other vendor-based, keyword-driven test tools, making the transition to open source much more comfortable for them. If your team is mostly made up of testers, Robot Framework is an excellent option for your automation framework.

The Broadcom Agile Requirements Designer automation tool takes a unique approach to test automation. Rather than focusing on the code, it creates automated tests automatically using model-based requirements. Using a model-based approach is cool because it can auto-generate and update test cases whenever a change is made to the model. If a model-based approach for test automation sounds like a solution that would work for your team, but you have a tight budget, check out GraphWalker.

GraphWalker is an open source Model-based testing tool for test automation. It's designed to make it easy to design your tests using graphs. Ranorex test studio is a functional test automation tool that is driven by the user interface. It helps you automate anything when it comes to web applications, mobile applications or desktop-based applications. Many teams that use BDD have a hard time managing all their manual, exploratory and automated tests in one place. To address this issue, HipTest has developed a single platform to help with those BDD testing efforts.

Because of its unique, image-based recognition abilities, it's known for its ability to test hard-to-automate applications; especially those with object recognition issues. Unfortunately, however, anyone who has done image-based, functional test automation understands how difficult these types of tests can be to maintain, and some customers have noted that as an issue. TestArchitect is a codeless, keyword-driven automation framework that makes it easy for teams to create and manage large test suites.

When I asked Hung Q. Nguyen the co-founder of LogiGear why he created Test Architect he mentioned that creating a test is one thing. But tests change and they change very rapidly. How do you rapidly change the test and maintaining it and updating it so that you can scale? That was the thinking behind the design of Test Architect. If you need to focus your automation efforts on user experience design UX or layout testing, Galen Framework might be a perfect fit for your needs.

It also lets you specify your browser size, then run tests against your software to check layout specifications. Galen tests also generate detailed HTML reports with screenshots, and it includes a visual image comparison with a cool heat map feature. Their solution Tosca boasts a scriptless technology that is used for functional test automation.

Testim leverages machine learning to speed up the authoring, execution and—most importantly—the maintenance of automated tests. Their goal is to help you to start trusting your tests. Testim focuses on reducing your flaky tests and test maintenance, which they see as one of the most significant challenges for most organizations. Compared to most of the other tools on this list, Cypress is a more developer-centric test automation framework that focuses on making test-driven development TDD a reality for developers.

One of its design principles was to be able to package and bundle everything together to make the entire end-to-end testing experience pleasant and simple. It has a different architecture than Selenium; while Selenium WebDriver runs remotely outside the browser, Cypress runs inside of it. It also gives you native access to every object without requiring you to deal with object serialization or over-the-wire protocols.

As a result, it can synchronously notify you of every single thing that happens inside the browser so that you have native access to every distributed object model DOM element.

Do fault insertion to assure that the tool behaves properly in all the expected scenarios. Do testing in the context of your use. Understand the tool's limitations. Each tool will solve problems but also create potential issues. You must know what these are. Now you can use it. Once the tool is validated, monitor your use and the results of the tool. If you find that you have additional uses that were not validated, those will need to be validated prior to use. Likewise, if you find new "expected scenarios" that were unknown at the time of the original validation, additional documentation of the behavior of the tool under these new scenarios should be placed in the validation file.

One example of a commonly used code review tool is a static code analyzer. FDA recommends the use of static code analyzers in high-risk applications, especially for medical device software. Static code analyzers will find issues that you know are not associated with the basic code. Many false positive issues are found that you then have to evaluate and investigate. Static code analyzers have coding rules that they enforce. If the code does not conform to their rules, you will get many issues that you need to review and resolve.

Once you have resolved them, this information on the false positives routinely identified by the tool can be used so that the next time the false error is found, in the same way by the static code analyzer, you do not need to do another investigation. Some companies change their coding standards to conform to the tool for all future development.

However, because they often have built code on old code bases, they maintain a list of false errors they will ignore or not investigate fully. Static code analyzers also allow you or the tool vendor to do custom configurations.

These customizations tell the analyzer to ignore some of the false errors that the tool finds but that the developers know are not issues with the code and can be ignored. One client of mine did extensive research to determine the best static code analyzer for their needs. They set up code modules with common errors, complexities, and poor coding practices as well as modules with good code, then ran several different manufacturers' static code analyzers through their tests.

They chose the tool that found the most types of errors and issues. They documented the limitations of the static code analyzer so other verification methods could be used to find those errors the static code analyzer missed. They compiled a list of common false errors the tool found.

They documented the code errors, their investigations into each one, the results of the investigations, and what they would do with each false error when used to analyze all their code modules. A robust solution for end-to-end web testing. API Testing.

API automation for all testers and developers. Mobile Testing. Desktop Testing. A flexible solution for all desktop apps. From data-driven, cross-browser to BDD testing, and more. Katalon Store Extend automation features in Katalon Studio. Web Testing A robust solution for end-to-end web testing.

Desktop Testing A flexible solution for all desktop apps. Methodologies From data-driven, cross-browser to BDD testing, and more. Sign In. Download Now. Table of Contents. Sign up to our newsletter. Get the latest articles on all things data delivered straight to your inbox.

Type of testing There are 2 main types, functional and non-functional : Functional: Which tests the real-world, business application of a software solution. For example, a ride-sharing app like Uber must be able to connect end users to drivers when all conditions are met, at the bare minimum. Non-functional: Which tests the remaining requirements of the software for example performance, security, data storage, etc. With the ride-sharing example, this type of testing will ensure that the app is fast and efficient when performing its most essential functions, like connecting end users to drivers in this case.

Integration Tests: Integration tests take all the individual pieces and functionalities of a software solution and test them together as a whole to guarantee smooth operation between all of them. Security Tests: Security tests cover Functional and Non-functional tests that screen the software for any vulnerabilities.

They reveal weaknesses and any potential exploit in a system. Performance Tests: Performance tests are often Non-functional tests that help testers evaluate criteria like responsiveness and stability as the software handles load and stress.

Acceptance Tests: Acceptance tests are functional tests that determine how acceptable the software is to the end-users. This is the final test a solution must pass before it could be released. Phase of testing Unit: As the name implies, this phase tests the individual components, or units, of software. Unit testing is the very first phase of testing, usually done manually by developers before handing the software off to testers, but it could also be automated.

This phase of testing is fairly flexible; it could be conducted either before or after the UI phase, which we will go over shortly, and by either the development or the testing team. This phase of testing is run by testers after the UI of the application has been drafted for the most authentic replication of user experience possible. This is where the business logic of the software is examined and optimized, which also falls under the Functional test classification.

Automation Test Frameworks Once the types of automated testing used in a project have been determined, an automation test framework is then chosen to help testers organize and standardize the process. Types of Framework There are many frameworks to choose from, but here are some of the most common ones.

Modular Based Framework: As the name implies, this framework organizes each test case into smaller parts called modules, and these modules are independent of each other. However, prior planning and test automation knowledge are required to successfully implement this framework. Library Architecture Framework: Building on top of the Modular Framework, the Library Architecture Framework boasts several advantages over the former.

Instead of breaking up the test case, this framework groups similar tasks within the test script into functions and then stores them in a library. Since these functions consist of tasks with common objectives, they can be called upon by the test script whenever a functionality is needed.

This kind of structure allows for even greater reusability and flexibility in testing but at the cost of more time writing the script and test automation experience required. Tools to Use for Your Automated Tests After choosing the right test automation framework to follow, an automation tool is needed to conduct your tests.

Selenium Undoubtedly, the most popular test automation tool currently available. Related Articles.