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Selenium: The Most Sought-After tool for Automation Testing
Automation Testing | What is Automation Testing?
Automation testing is a technique through which an application is to be implemented with full life cycle of the Application software in less time & provides efficiency & effectiveness to the testing software’s.
Automation testing is a script writing technique where software tester writes scripts by own and uses software/applications to test the software. manual testing process is been converted into automation process . For regression testing, Automation testing also used to test the entire application from performance, load & stress point of view.
For Automation testing it needs automation tools to write & execute test cases. While executing an automated test suite, no manual involvement is required. Software testers write test cases & test scripts using the automation tool & group together to form test suites.
The main goal of Automation testing is to develop software value & increase the test efficiency.
A s/w tester is a person responsible for testing the software/application and is expected to think in such a way to find out as much possible cases as can be to ensure the newly developed system/application is working as desired without interfering with existing situations/scenario like system crash downs, slowing down the system, cause some existing functionalities to not work properly etc.
If we talk about selenium than Selenium is one of the most commonly used automation technique which is been used now a days worldwide. It is an open source automation testing tool which does have a collection of language-specific bindings to drive browsers. Selenium is cross-platform compatible, and supports many scripting languages like C#, Java, Perl, PHP, Python and Ruby but most commonly Java is preferred for automation testing. Automation technique is affordable and transparent.
Components of selenium:-
Selenium-IDE:-
- It is a plug-in for Mozilla Firefox.
- The test cases are recorded and can be played.
- For corresponding scripting languages test steps can be converted accordingly.
Automation Testing Using Selenium Web Driver
II) Selenium Web Driver:-
- Drives a browser natively either locally or on remote machines.
- It’s not tied to any particular test framework.
III) Selenium-Grid:-
- selenium grid distributes transparently on multiple machines.
- selenium grid Tests run in parallel & cutting down the load and time.
Why Selenium is considered a great tool for Automation Testing:-
Selenium is an open source test automation framework for web applications which do comes with a suite of tools that support the development of automated testing for web application. The suite mainly includes:
- Selenium – IDE: this is a feature specifically for Mozilla Firefox which is normally used for debugging, recording & editing selenium scripts.
- Selenium – RC: This is used to execute tests on various browsers & systems.
- Selenium – Grid: this one helps in running & executing diverse Selenium RC test cases concurrently & do enables segregation of tests across devices/browsers for simultaneous execution.
- Selenium – Web Drive: This is the latest version of Selenium which comprises multiple Selenium APIs.
When to automate a software/application:-
Automation testing can be used in the following scenario of the Software/applications.
- When Requirements do not change frequently
- The Obtain ability of time
- Access the application for load and performance with many virtual users
- When we have Huge and serious projects
- When Projects that need to test the same areas often
Simple Steps to follow in Automation testing:-
There are many tools to write automation scripts, it’s better to identify the process before using those tools which can be used to automate the testing,
- Make sure the areas within software/application to automate
- For test automation choose the appropriate tool
- Do Write test scripts
- Do Develop the test suits
- Do execute the test scripts
- Do Build the result reports
- And finally find possible bugs or performance issue to report it to Developers.
Advantages of Automation Testing:-
- It Increases productivity
- It Saves money
- It Increases software/application quality
- It Reduces testing time
- It Support various software/applications
- It Increase testing coverage
- It Reduce the repetitive work
- For Greater consistency
Disadvantages of selenium:-
- Selenium can only be used for testing web applications.
- There is no tool supports available as it is open source.
- Selenium IDE can only be installed in Firefox.
Different Software testing tools Available in Automation Testing:-
These are some tools which can be helpful in Automation testing: —-
- Silk Test
- Selenium
- IBM Rational Functional Tester
- Testing Anywhere
- Test Complete
- HP Quick Test Professional
- Win Runner
- Load Runner
- Visual Studio Test Professional
Conclusion:-
Automation testing is user-friendly, affordable and transparent system and a great way to fulfill most of the testing goals with effective resources and time but no any tool can fulfill 100% requirement. Always get that tool that matches to your exact requirement & for rest part do the manual testing.
