Selenium Automation Testing Tools Benefits: When an application has fully developed, every organization tests its product to verify it has no defects. During the testing, the testers try to catch the defect before the product is released for this. The manual testers come with the best manual testing process. However, test automation is the best way to increase the effectiveness, efficiency, and coverage of software testing.
Automation testing is software testing involving tools to execute sets of predefined tests. The benefits are that automation allows for more reliable and consistent test execution, which can lead to higher-quality software releases.
Automated testing does not eliminate all types of manual testing, but it can be used as part of an overall strategy to reduce the number of manual tests and increase the reliability and consistency of test outcomes. Automation testing is most effective when combined with other strategies, such as integration, unit, and regression testing.
Automation testing requires more focus on designing and blueprinting the tests upfront than manual processes. Automated tests are normally created using scripting languages to allow for easy re-use of the same test case across different test environments.
Automated tests can be either “manual” or “scripted”. Automation based on scripts tends to be faster to execute but also slower to create and maintain than automation based on manual actions. Automated testing may require specific tools, though this often comes down to budget constraints rather than functional requirements. In general, automated systems are less complex than their non-automated counterparts.
This blog post will cover some considerations for using automation in your QA process, including:
- What types are available;
- How they work;
- How Automation testing can be used to help improve both application and infrastructure performance
- When you should start using them;
- When you should stop using them;
- Pros and Cons;
- Costs involved with development overhead on existing systems or new projects.
Why Test Automation?
Test automation is the best way to increase the effectiveness, efficiency, and coverage of your software testing. An automated test suite can do many things a manual tester cannot: Automation uses standard technology (e.g., Visual Studio, Eclipse) – so it’s easy to run tests on any platform with no special setup required.
Automated tests are repeatable – consistently run on any machine. Automated tests can be easily parameterized – to produce many different test cases from the same script with little effort.
Automated tests can have multiple levels of coverage – each logical path in code has an automated test case that covers it, so you gain 100% statement, branch, decision, and condition coverage for every line of code you write.
Automated tests automatically capture rich data – test results, screenshots, and other useful information are included in the test output. The best way to get coverage is to use automated testing, a full stop!
Automation makes it easy to Ensure 100% statement coverage of every line of code; Define multiple test cases and test scripts per feature to ensure thorough testing of every scenario (e.g., positive, negative, boundary); Gain continuous integration benefits: Re-run tests automatically each time code changes are made Get immediate feedback.
Automation Testing Types
Several types of Automation testing can be used based on the software development lifecycle and specific project needs.
Automated tests fall into mainly two categories:
- Functional: Automates manual tests by running scripts against the application. Functional Automation usually involves testing to ensure that functionality in the application is operating as designed and follows the requirements.
- Non-functional: Automates manual tests by running scripts against the application. Non-Functional Automation usually involves testing to ensure that non-functional aspects of the application are behaving as designed and following the requirements.
Type of tests
Apart from the types of automation testing:
- Smoke Tests: Automated smoke tests are shallow tests designed to ensure that the basic functionality of an application is working. Smoke Tests are also good to use after Automated functional or Automated non-functional Automation Tests to verify that changes in the application didn’t impact the Automated test scripts. Automated Smoke tests are also good to use at the beginning of a project or before new features have been implemented.
Automated Smoke tests quickly verify that the Automated functional Automation scripts still work after any changes. Automated Smoke tests can verify that important Automated tests are still being executed as part of the regression Automation script. - Integration Tests: Automates the testing of various components of the overall system to verify that they work together. Integration tests can be used throughout the SDLC and are generally integrated with the Automation scripts.
- Regression Tests: Automates tests to verify that new or changed software doesn’t impact existing functionality. Regression Automation usually involves testing to ensure the software returns correct results for known test data.
- Performance Automation: Automates tests using various performance testing methodologies to ensure the application meets its SLAs and scales appropriately. Automation tools for performance testing normally do not execute test scripts; rather, they record data from tests and generate test reports. Automation tools for performance testing also allow for comparing current results against baseline results. Automation tools for performance testing are generally integrated with other Automation scripts.
- Security Tests: Automates tests to verify that the application is secure against attacks and contains no vulnerabilities or data leaks. Automation tools for Security usually automate many of the manual tests used in security testing. Automation tools for Security usually generate test reports. Automation tools for Security are generally integrated with other Automation scripts.
- Acceptance Tests: Automates tests to verify that the application meets its SLAs. Automation tools for Automated acceptance testing usually incorporate Automated functional Automation scripts with Automated regression Automation scripts. Automated acceptance tests are usually integrated with Automation test reporting tools. Automated acceptance tests can also be used as Automated functional Automation scripts with Automated non-functional Automation scripts to verify that an application meets its SLAs. Automated acceptance tests can be considered functional Automation scripts with Automated regression Automation scripts.
Phase of Testing
Based on the phases of the application, the testing can be of different types:
- Unit Testing
- API Testing
- UI Testing
When to use Automation testing?
You must be careful when the problem in your code is fixed but might have broken some of the other code. In that case, you can’t guarantee that a new bug has been introduced. But to ensure this, you need to do regression testing around the bug fix. This means doing this type of testing every time you manually test the area with a problem. If your company needs to work more efficiently and spend less money without losing quality, they should use automation testing instead of manual testing.
Test automation is a process to ensure that the software application functions as expected after every new development release. Investing in test automation requires time, money, and resources but will save you precious hours when executing regression tests later on without investing more effort than necessary.
Test Cases You Should Automate
Testing the software manually is more time-consuming and expensive than a fully automated model. Efficient automation from top to bottom has many benefits, like better results, improved quality, increased reliability, reduced deviation in results, decreased test cycle time, and increased coverage of tests taken on your product. You’ll see these advantages by automating testing rather than manually.
However, there is no easy answer to which tests should be automated. But It’s important to understand the benefits of automating individual test cases.
Here are more tips to consider when deciding which test cases to automate.
1. Repetitive Test Runs
If the test run is repetitive, you should automate it. This will save you precious time and energy. In addition, automating is a very good idea if this is the test you assume you will run frequently. You will have more accurate and precise results each time.
2. High-Risk Test Cases
If a risk is described as “high” (e.g., because it implies human error), then the test cases should be automated to reduce that risk. Prioritize these cases, starting with those involving the highest-risk human errors and moving downward in order of risk.
3. Critical Parts of A Web Application
Automating critical parts of your web application is a wise decision. You want to avoid any chance of human error and make sure nothing goes wrong. This is especially true for test cases that can ruin your entire service.
4. Extensive Tests
If you have to input lots of information, it can be hard, and the chances of making a mistake are high. Large forms should generally be automated because they involve filling in many fields.
5. Evaluate the Pros and Cons
Consider which test cases are most important. Even if you have the time, automation might not be worth it if there are a lot of complicated steps to complete.
6. Three Golden Tests
A regression, smoke, and sanity test should be automated because they are crucial to app development.
7. If You Can Answer the Magical Question “Why?”
Test automation should only be used in the right circumstances. If an automated test case benefits you, your team, or the organization, then go ahead and use it; however, make sure that Selenium can handle deep scripting for a successful implementation of automated testing.
Manual testing sometimes presents a better option for teams with less skilled Selenium users. Remember that the answer to the question “Why?” regarding automation must never be “Because I can.”
8. Complex Cases
Automating complex test cases is almost always a good idea. Save your time and be safe regarding complexity, especially in long-running tests.
9. Performance Testing
We usually automate performance testing, such as load and stress testing.
10. Long Testing
If the test case requires working for more than one day, you should automate it.
When Not to Automate?
There are several times when manual testing is advisable. If you have a test case that has not yet been fully explored, doing it manually is much better than attempting to automate the task.
What application can we automate using the Selenium Automation Testing Tool?
We can automate both Desktop- and Web-based applications and mobile applications. When we talk about any application that mainly consists of the 3 layers
- Front End
- Middleware
- Back End
In this post, we are going to discuss selenium. so as we know, it is an open-source tool used for automating the application, but by using selenium, we can test the front end only. Before entering into more depth, let’s discuss or find out a few basic things about selenium.
- According to Wikipedia, Jason Huggins originally developed it 2004 as an internal tool at Thought Works.
- We can automate web-based applications using Selenium.
- Selenium is a set of tools with a different approach to test automation.
- Selenium is an open-source tool that can automate web-based applications across browsers like Chrome and Firefox, i.e., opera. It supports different platforms like Windows, Linux, Mac, etc.
- It is not a single tool. It’s a suite because it combines multiple tools like Selenium Integrated Development Environment (IDE), Selenium Remote Control (RC), Selenium Web driver & Selenium Grid.
- It can be integrated with tools such as TestNG & JUnit for managing test cases and generating reports.
- It can also be integrated with Maven, Jenkins & Docker for continuous integration testing.
- We can prepare the test scripts using any programming language: Java, Python, C#, PHP, Ruby, Perl & .Net.
- It is impossible to test images, but we can automate it by integrating with Sikuli for image-based testing.
- There is no native reporting facility available. But we can overcome that issue by integrating it with frameworks like TestNG or JUnit.
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