Figure 1. Automated Testing
It is very important to have quality software. This means that quality should meet many requirements, such as keeping the Graphical User Interface (GUI) simple to use, including faults and failures, and so on. A fruitful effort is needed to make this quality a reasonable standard. Testing is one of the most significant parts of quality assurance, especially during the development phase. As the development of the program is coming to an end, fixing the errors becomes more difficult, and in fact it develops harder to find the errors. This may mean checking each part during development to find and fix errors before affecting on to the subsequent stage. In this paper, the authors have discussed the features of different automated software testing tools. In brief, they have obtained a comprehensive explanation concentrating on numerous feature set, efficiency, easiness, and usability of each tool.
Software testing is designed to provide software developers and users with information about the excellence of the software or services being tested. Software testing is also provides an objective, independent view of the software that enables organizations to identify and understand the hazards of software implementation. The test techniques include the process of executing a program or application to discover software errors to confirm that the software product is suitable for practice. Testing should be done during the development phase, and if, it is not completed, there may be many errors. This can cause the system to crash. However, if the test is complete, you can find it before moving on to the next stage. Humans can make the mistakes, so if they do everything, then it may not work. Some code may not be used by humans, so this can lead to system errors. With development of the software industry, it is becoming more and more competitive and advanced for companies to produce such high-quality software. This is also the reliability and deadline that must be met. Testing plays an important role in the deadline, as testing can take a long time to complete. The production and excellence of the software must be increased, so that the company can produce the best software. Therefore, testing must be done throughout the software programming process. Manual testing is a very lengthy process, with testing tools and can progress in productivity level to meet deadlines. Automated tested, basically uses programs, that is testing by some form of automated method. They are computerized and help with various types of testing. Some of these test tasks include checking conditions, checking for predicted and actual results, and many other types of tests involved. Many of these test tools have common coding languages, like Java & C.
Different methods can be used, when implementing the test tool. The test methods can be used together or separately. It all depends on what you are testing because they provide better resources for different tasks. These are some of the main types of use, but other types of tests are also available:
This is the software used for verification and validation. This is a way for programmers to test all the individual code and see if it works. This type of testing is based on small scale and uses small units of the program. When viewing procedural programming, the unit can be any separate function or a process written in the same language as the production code (Unit Testing, n.d).
This is similarly recognized as transparent box testing, glass box testing, translucent box testing, or structural testing. It uses the inner viewpoint of the system and then designs test cases based on this internal structure. Basically, the code itself and all the conditions, statements, and paths are tested. Note that all the tracks through the software require programming skills. White-box testing can do a lot of things, such as analyzing data streams, controlling streams, information flow, and coding practices (White-box Testing, n.d).
This is a software test that basically looks for software regression. As long as the software stops working, a regression will occur. Testing ensures that any errors or changes have been fixed that may cause previous work functions to fail with newly added features. It is best to do this type of testing in an automated tool environment. Regression testing may occur when a programmer attempts to fix a problem or deliberately adds code to issue an error (Regression Testing, n.d).
The testing, where the specific software components are put organized and tested as a whole. This is usually done after the unit test is completed. The key to integration testing is that it verifies the functional and performance requirements of the design. It is part of Extreme Programming (XP). Two different ways to perform integration testing are bottom-up and top-down (Integration Testing, n.d).
This section describes the different types of tests that can be used to test software during Software Development Life Cycle (SDLC) (Software Testing, n.d).
Manual tests include manual test software, that is, without automation tools or any script. In this type, the tester assumes the role of the end user and tests the software to identify any unexpected behavior or error. Manual tests have different phases, such as unit tests, integration tests, system tests, and user acceptance tests. Evaluators use test plans, test cases, or test scenarios to test the software to ensure the integrity of the test. Manual tests also include exploratory tests because the tester scans the software to identify errors.
Automated testing (also known as test automation) is when evaluators write scripts and test products with other software. This process involves the automation of manual processes (Figure 1). Automated tests are used to re-run test plans that are manual, fast, and repetitive. In addition to the regression tests, automated tests are also used to test applications from the perspective of load, performance, and stress. It increases test coverage, improves accuracy, and saves time and money compared to manual tests (Integration Testing, n.d).
Figure 1. Automated Testing
Jagannatha, Niranjanamurthy, Manushree, & Chaitra’s (2014) research highlights the different components of Selenium, such as Selenium IDE, Selenium RC, Selenium Webdriver, and Selenium Grid. It also focuses on the requirements of the Selenium test framework, the most commonly used commands, and is compared to Quick Test Professional (QTP) test tools. However, this study is more focused on Selenium, which does not discuss too much QTP. The research here is more focused on Selenium, which is also known as the best tool for automated test sites. The research conducted by (Sharma & Vishawjyoti, 2013) is mainly focused on the Selenium IDE, a component of the Selenium IDE. The study included a set of test cases and correctly mentioned how to document test cases in the IDE. However, the study is limited to the Selenium IDE. A study by (Gogna, 2014) introduced the basic features of automated tools: WATIR and Selenium. Gogna mentioned that Web Application Testing in Ruby (WATIR) can be used to access frames and pop-ups. However, Selenium requires users to have advanced language skills to test frames and pop-ups. This is indeed a good article on Selenium and WATIR, but lacks a comparison between the two tools. Kaur and Gupta (2013) show a comparative study between Selenium, test complete, and QTP tools. The study contains dissimilar features, but does not provide automation features, such as logging and playback, cross-platform, or browser support. Angmo and Sharma (2014) have used the WATIR Webdriver to evaluate the performance of the Selenium suite. Although the study covers most of the comparison criteria, the missing point in the study is the comparison with any commercial testing tool. While considering free and commercial tools, there are more cases to compare. Naidu, Basri, & Nagenthram (2014) conducted a study, two of which are open source (Selenium and SAHI). Finally, they mentioned that Selenium's goal is the best programmer, and SAHI's goal is for non-programmer testers. In the study conducted by different characteristics of QTP and Ranorex were analyzed and compared. This is a good study, but it lacks comparison with any open source tools. Jain, Jain, and Dhankar (2014) conducted another study comparing UFT / QTP, Selenium, test complete, and SoapUI. All of these tools are compared to many features, and according to its comparison, SoapUI is the best tool (Kumar, 2015). However, SoapUI is a commercial tool that does not support multiple languages, operating systems, and windows applications.
The goal line of this research paper is to introduce the various roles of software testing tools and to assess and associate these tools to determine their helpfulness. The study is also permissible for a basic comparison between automated and manual testing to demonstrate the importance of automated testing in the software industry. The main purpose of this paper is to reveal comparative research on standards-based automated tools, such as generating test scripts, playback functions, results reporting, speed, and cost involved.
The following is a list of tools for software testing. Tools are primarily used to save work time and process large amounts of data. There are many free and paid tools on the market (Jagannatha et al., 2014).
Selenium is a testing framework for performing web application testing on a variety of browsers and platforms, such as Windows, Mac, and Linux. Selenium helps testers write tests in a variety of programming languages, such as Java, PHP, C#, Python, Groovy, Ruby, and Perl. It provides recording and playback capabilities to write tests without having to learn Selenium IDE.
Selenium is proud to support some of the largest, but well-known browser vendors that ensure that Selenium is the native part of the browser. Without a doubt, Selenium is the basis of most other software testing tools.
TestingWhiz provides scripts without coding by Cygnet Infotech, a Capability Maturity Model Integration (CMMi) level 3 IT solutions provider. The enterprise edition of the TestingWhiz tool provides a complete set of automated test solutions, such as web testing, software testing, database testing, API testing, mobile application testing, maintenance of regression test sets, optimization and automation, and tests in several browsers.
TestingWhiz proposes various significant features like
HP QuickTest Professional has been renamed to HPE Unified Functional Testing. HPE UFT provides test automation for the functionality and regression testing of software applications. This tool uses the Visual Basic Scripting Edition scripting language to register the testing process and manipulate various objects and controls while testing the application.
5.4.1 QTP Proposals
TestComplete is a functional test platform that provides a variety of solutions to automatically test desktop, web, and mobile applications with SmartBear software.
TestComplete offers the subsequent features:
Ranorex Studio offers a variety of test automation tools covering testing all desktop, web, and mobile applications.
Ranorex offers subsequent features:
Sahi is a test automation tool for automated web application testing. Open source Sahi is written in Java and JavaScript programming languages.
Sahi provides subsequent features:
Watir is an open source testing tool made up of Ruby libraries to automate web application testing. It is pronounced as “water.”
Watir offers subsequent features:
Tosca Testsuite by Tricentis uses model-based test automation to automate software testing.
Tosca Testsuite comes with subsequent abilities:
Telerik Test Studio provides a solution for automated desktop, web, and mobile application testing, including UI, load, and performance testing.
Telerik Test Studio proposes numerous compatibilities like:
The key features in the test tool were compared and the results are summarized in Tables 1 and 2. Most of the comparison criteria included here are based on the available features of the test tool, and some standards are also based on test results.
Table 1. Comparison among Selenium, TestingWhiz, QTP, TestComplete, and Ranorex Testing Tools
Table 2. Comparison among Sahi, Watir, Tosca Testsuite, and Telerik Test Studio
Testing is a big problem in software development. Completing a task has been always difficult and a time-consuming task. Through the production of test tools, the production and completion time of the software has been greatly reduced. Some programs require manual testing, which takes a long time to complete, but with the new testing tools, even with limited time, we will reduce the number of manual tests that must be performed. With automated testing tools, we can diminish the time and labor required and save a lot of money (Automated Testing, n.d). In addition, using these automated test tools can reduce the space for errors. As more test tools are produced, they can only reduce the number of errors a program can face. Having a test tool can also cause problems. Although it can reduce costs by using test tools, this may not always be the case. The cost of having to actually own the tool can be very expensive. This extra help can be very expensive. In addition, another problem with it is that the use of test tools must have sufficient knowledge and resources to use them. Programmers must be able to use these tools, so they must have the same amount of knowledge and understand it in software development. However, with this, the problem of money has emerged (Top 10 Automated Testing Tool, n.d). Fault and failures are the basic characters, which can be rectified by testing methodologies, and tools implementation. The system crash is a result of failure of the software and for this, industries are still dependent on automated tools. The above comparative studies are already having details regarding testing tools. Verification and Validation is a code testing method that uses chunks of code to be verified and to run on the platforms. The comparative study reveals the fact that open source, mobile based applications, web application with model, and virtualized network are more promising testing tools in the current scenario for software testing. Cost cutting can also be a result if we get free tools. Results are better when we get output with record and play mode with automation framework and with GUI features. For upcoming work, the authors goal is to spread this study by adding a few more testing tools to examine and compare. Then the particular tools should have newest features.