Top 40 Testing Blogs

Changed the theme of the blog today( Isn't it looking good now? :) ) . Today, I came accross an nice post , would like to share with you. The post named "Top 40 Automated Testing Blogs", consisting of links to 40 Blogs based on their:

• PageRank (PR) - Google's view of the importance of a pag. The bigger, the better.
• AlexaRank (AR) - Alexa's range of a site based on a traffic.The lower, the better.
• TechnoratiRank (TR) - position of the blog among all Technorati blogs. The lower, the better.
• Comments (Cmts) - number of comments for all articles posted during previous 3 months (Aug, Sep, Oct 2008). The bigger, the better.
• Incoming links (Links) - number calculated by Yahoo Site Explorer. The bigger, the better.

Although ,according to me, these Blogs are more of "Testing Blogs" rather than "Automated Testing Blogs", it is a nice consolidation of information at one place.

Platform Independent Automation

While evaluating function testing automation tool for my company, I faced a major problem. The tool had to be 'multi-platform'. Our application ran on Windows, Linux, Apple so does this means three diffrent tools, three diffrent scripts for each test case, triple effort. Luckily there was a solution and I found it in Eggplant (no not the vegitable).

TestPlant's User Interface Testing Automation Tool Eggplant, solves this problem as it works on the VnC (virtual network computing). It can be installed on Windows or Apple machine, and it connects to any OS through VnC. All the automation it does is on the VnC window, which is just like remote desktop in windows.

Like other automation tool this is neither dependent on the OS on which application is running nor on the technology the application is build on. How? This tool looks for the objects as images and finds these objects on the desktop image it recieves from VnC. For eg. if you want to search for an icon on the desktop. The image of that icon will be the object and the tool will look for the icon image within the desktop image.

What about Text? With the OCR capability build in it can read text from the remote machine, also if the text is selectable, it'll read it from the selection. The scripts can be written in an English-Like language called 'Sense Talk', which is although weird for a programmer, but good for testers who dont have much development experience. It also has an image doctor to handle changes in object between builds.

So far so good, although it has some amazing features I am still not sure about few things like

• Its text handling capabilities. I mean what if we have a data in the table on our SUT, can we access the data by using rows and column, something like ReadTextFromTable(2,4)? It will require extra handling.
  
• How will it search the object that are hidden by scrollbars, means I have to scroll to view the object? It Will this require extra handling
• What about controls like combo-boxes or listboxes, will it be able to select an item in combo-box like any other tool
• Other tools will work if the text on the button has changed but its name remains same, but this will not, you will need to recapture the object.
• What if my application needs to disconnect from the network between the test? This will result in disconnecting VnC connection.
  

All-in-all I was impressed with the idea. So impressed that my developer instinct forced me to write my own tool as an experiment on the same technology, let see how far I reach. Will keep you updated on that.

10 Best Functional Testing Automation tools

This Article will tell you the most used Functional Testing Automation Tools in the industry.

Before starting let me tell you that there is no 'Best' tool for everyone that can cater to all the requirements. So, its up to you and your requirements that you should choose the best tool for yourself.

Before deciding on the tool you must ask yourself a few questions like

• What is your SUT(system under test)? Including technology used to build the SUT( windows-based, Web-based, etc), enviornment it can run in( OS, hardware, etc)
  
• What are your Automation Goals/needs?
• How much is your budget?

So here's a list of ten mostly used tools for testing automation in the industry, not in an order or rating. (Click on the image or link to go directly to the tool page)



Quick Test Professional



WinRunner



Rational Functional Tester



Rational Robot



TestPlants's Eggplant



Borland Silk Test



Compuware Test Partner




Seapine QA Wizard Pro



Parasoft J-Test and C++ Test




e-TEST Suite Web Testing Products



There are also some open source tools for functional testing automation, which are worth mentioning. UI Automation Verify (UIA Verify) Test Automation Framework is Microsoft's contibution to Open Source and Selinium is a FireFox Pluggin used for web-based automations.

For more detailed evaluation you can visit
http://www.forrester.com/
http://www.compuware-insight.com/

Just remember, “The first rule of any technology used in a business is that automation applied to an efficient operation will magnify the efficiency. The second is that automation applied to an inefficient operation will magnify the inefficiency.”

Testing Automation - Is it Just Testing?

WiKiPedia defines Testing Automation as the "use of software to control the execution of tests, the comparison of actual outcomes to predicted outcomes, the setting up of test preconditions, and other test control and test reporting functions". But if you ask me its much more than that.

Automation Tools are one of the most 'under-utilized' tools in software. They are capable of much more than executing a bunch of testcases , to reduce manual effort. So what else can we use these tools for?

Few of the uses that these tools can be put to, except for automating test cases can be:

• Automating Repeated Task: This is the most obvious use these tools can be put to. I have been using Automation for more than 2 years now, and I use these to do repeted tasks like configuration. As in our case we need to build 30-40 configurations in our SUT and manual effort per configuration is around 15 min. We can take input from a datapool or simply from a text file and the script can configure the SUT automatically.

• Data Mining & Web Research: Ok, now leave the testing and lets think out of the box. Web is a fertile area for data mining and research. Problem is that its time consuming to get the data from various sources and assemble them together to get the relevant information. Automation tools can help you here to get the data from the web and put it in a single location for offline research. Converting Data to information and then eventully to knowledge will still be done manually but still a huge effort can be saved.

• Network Mangement and Scheduling: There are tools specifically build for network management task, but we can also use our functional testing tools for scheduling and network management to some extent. We can build into these tools the capabilities to centrally manage printers, registry settings, Firewalls, e-mail profiles, browsers settings, patch management and Office settings. Scheduling can be handled to run specific tasks at a particular time.

• Desktop Automation: With a simple record and playback you can automate almost any task on the desktop that takes a lot of step or is not easy to do from command line. You can create a macro and assign a hot-key to it or some tools even let you build a stand-alone executable file.

• Un-Ethical (Mis)Uses: Now to the other face of the coin, if you can use it you can also mis-use it. Hackers have been known to use automation tools for ,obviously, hacking :). Let me say "Don't try this at home", but these have been used to hack online accounts by using brute-force methods, spamming emails and even to earn money by advertisers by 'Artifical-Clicking' on ads. Sites designers should use "image-verification" to avoid these hacks.

By: Anuj Kapoor