Automation Testing

INTRODUCTION

Software Testing is a technique to verify if the actual product meets expected requirements and ensure that the product has zero defects. There are two types of testing- Manual and Automated. Manual test cases are applied manually by a tester without using any automated tools. Manual testing aims to recognize the software application’s bugs, errors, and defects. Moreover, manual testers are responsible for making a record of their findings.

AUTOMATION TESTING

Automation Testing is the process of writing test scripts using any programming language as per the requirement of the project/client/company. These test scripts are made based on the test cases written by the manual tester. Further running test scripts by repeating pre-defined actions to reduce the gross testing time by helping in faster product releases. Test Automation aims to replace manual human effort with systems or devices. For exploratory testing, maintaining test scripts is less time-consuming but more time-consuming.

TYPES OF AUTOMATION TESTING

• Functional: The type of testing in which testing is done based on the real-world business application of a software solution. For instance, a platform like Uber where those who drive and deliver can connect with riders, eaters, and restaurants when all conditions are met, at the bare minimum.
• Non-functional: The type of testing in which the unique requirements of the software (for instance, security, performance, data storage, etc.) are tested. Using the Functional testing example of Uber, this type of testing will make sure that the application is fast, quick, and efficient when trying to connect end users to drivers in this case.

TYPE OF TESTS

• Smoke Testing:
  Smoke testing is a type of functional testing in which the software build is deployed to ensure quality and further verification to ensure the application’s firmness. Smoke Testing is also called Build Verification Testing or Confidence Testing.
  
• Integration Testing:
  In this testing, the software’s smallest individual components are combined with being tested in a group. The integration testing aims to show defects during the relationship between integrated components or units.
• Regression Testing:
  Regression Testing is a combination of functional and non-functional testing. In this testing technique, the Test cases are re-executed to verify that the former feature/working of the application is performing well and that the new changes have not made any new bugs.
• Security Testing :
  Security Testing covers both functional and non-functional testing. It is a type of Software Testing that reveals threats, vulnerabilities, risks in a software application and averts malicious attacks from outsiders. The motive of Security Testing is to recognize all possible ambiguities and weaknesses of the system which might result in a loss of information, revenue, and reputation of the employees or outsiders of the Organization.
  
• Performance Tests:
  Performance tests are a type of Non-functional testing that helps testers to analyze the criteria like responsiveness and solidity as the software manages load and stress.
  
• Acceptance Tests:
  Acceptance testing comes under functional testing, which determines how acceptable the software is for the end-users. This final test must pass before it can be released to its users.
  

BENEFITS

1. Rapid Response Pattern
   Test automation aids you lessen the response cycle and give quick validation for phases in the development of your product.

2. Less amount of time for the team
   Takes less time by verifying developed features. It also helps the team to communicate better with multiple departments like marketing. It also helps with communication to other departments like design, marketing, or product owners who depend on the results of these tests. These departments can easily verify the logs of the automated tests and see the status.

3. Higher Test Coverage
   Manual testing limits the number of  tests humans can check. Automation permits you to spend time writing new tests and adding them to your automated test suite. This increases the test coverage for your product, so more features are properly tested resulting in a higher quality application.

5. Reusability of Test Suite
   The challenge is to build an automated suite. Although, once you have interpreted a suite, it is easy reusing tests for other use cases or required situations. The benefit underlying is that you can easily encounter another project to your automated test suite.
6. Better Accuracy
   It is possible to make mistakes during manual testing. Apart from that, automated tests can be executed with 100-percent accuracy as they give the same result every time you run them by eliminating human error.

CHALLENGES

1. Pop-Up Windows
   The pop-ups that we receive on the screen during automation testing are part of the operating system, but Selenium often fails to record these pop-ups in web apps, which makes it hard for developers to automate this process.

2. Dynamic Web Elements
   Often websites have web elements which are dynamic in nature and not visible when you visit the site for the first time. That means that the web pages are user-specific and display different data for different users based on their requirements; new data appears on the web page after a certain period of time or when a user clicks something on the page. This is just one example; you can accomplish the explicit wait in multiple ways.

4. Cross Browser Testing
   It means that it supports multiple languages and operating systems. While automating cross-browser testing with Selenium, an issue arises that some web elements are found in one browser and not in others.
5. Mobile Application Testing
   Selenium lets us test web applications that work on any browser and operating system on desktops, but in the case of mobile app testing, it cannot work with operating systems like Android and iOS. For example, the Facebook’s Version that you run in Safari on MacBook can be tested with Selenium, but it cannot be tested in a mobile Safari browser on your iPhone.

AUTOMATION FRAMEWORK

Testing frameworks are an integral part of an automated testing system. It helps to reduce maintenance costs, testing efforts and provides a higher return on investment (ROI) for QA teams looking to optimize their agile processes. Test Automation Framework is a bundle of guidelines including coding standards, test-data handling, object repository treatment and lots more giving beneficial outcomes like surged code re-usage, good portability, less script maintenance cost etc.

ADVANTAGES

• Saves time and effort
• Quick way to test things quickly
• Easy to maintain and Good Scalability
• Multiple data sets executed easily
• Independently built Test scripts regardless of platform
• High code reusability

DISADVANTAGES

• Rework is needed in order to maintain the application
• Individual should be well versed with programming fundamentals
• Time Consuming and complex
• Test Scripts for a particular framework are not reusable

TESTING TOOLS

1) Cucumber

2) Watir

3) Kobiton

4) testRigor

5) HP UFT (aka QTP)

6) Applitools

7) Virtuoso

8) TestComplete

9) mabl

10) Selenium