I am currently working on replacing an outdated test system that we're using at the company I work at with Robot Framework. The current system is used for function testing embedded systems that we produce. We are using an in-house software for executing the test scripts, which is good consider that the operators that are running the tests doesn't have a broad knowledge in programming. As it is right now they just need to know the name of the product and then press "Start test" in the GUI, which is exactly what we want.
What I've learned and seen now after spending some days playing around in Robot Framework is that there's no built-in GUI in some sort for executing test cases. I haven't even found a third-party solution for this, except using software like Jenkins, but that is not a good solution when the test needs to run locally on the computer where the operator is working. Running the tests from the terminal directly is not a good solution either, just because it's not that "user-friendly".
I've read about the Robot Framework Public API, which is so well documented that I could pretty easy build a new "Test Executor", but if there exists software that does this already I'm glad to hear about it!
I know that RIDE has the functionality to run selected tests via a GUI, but what I've experienced is that it's pretty easy to make horrible mistakes in that software. Don't get me wrong, RIDE is a awesome tool for creating .robot scripts, but it is not great as a "Test Executor", especially not when we really need to keep a constant production flow to meet our deadlines.
How should I handle this? Do you build your own tools for executing tests, or is it that I've missed something?
We are experimenting with test automation and have found that cucumber-jvm/espresso fits the best. Our next issue is finding a testing service that supports the framework. To run the tests we are currently running 'gradlew connectedCheck' at the command line but from what I have read, AWS Device Farm doesn't support cucumber-jvm/espresso. Any service should work, so long as it supports cucumber-jvm and has a variety of physical devices to test on.
I am hoping that someone out here has experience with this and knows where we should look.
Thanks
Is it necessary to use Cucumber along with Espresso in that case? You can always implement an entire test suite without the need of Cucumber. All you need is a good reporting tool to report you the passes and failures. There are plenty of solutions out there -- I would recommend using something like Spoon or Composer to run your tests in parallel on multiple devices or emulators or a combination of both. Both of these tools provide decent reporting. As far as a device farm is considered, AWS will support that.
We are working in a small team. We often had problems like developer1 did some changes in stored procedure or function and it affected work of developer2. Such issues are traced out by chance later. Please guide me how such issues can be stopped. Is there a free tool that we can run to test such issues?
Slowly introduce unit tests, focused integration tests and full system tests.
For all of those use a .net unit test framework to do it. It'll be what you do in the test what makes it be any of the above scenarios. Make sure to keep each of those 3 type of tests separately, as those will have a big difference on the speed it takes to execute them.
For the unit test framework I suggest NUnit but there are others, one that I've found interesting but never made the jump is xUnit.net.
For full system tests I suggest to run them in the unit test framework using WatiN. You could also go with Selenium RC.
We often had problems like developer1 did some changes in stored procedure or function and it affected work of developer2. Such issues are traced out by chance later.
For that specific type of scenario I strongly suggest focused integration tests. Full system tests might catch such scenario, but it will still left you to figure out why it broke.
Instead focus the test in the very specific db access code that makes the call to the procedure. By adding scenarios in there that reveal all the expectations developer2 had from said procedure when (s)he wrote the related .net code, regression issues with that integration code can be revealed very quickly and be dealt with very effectively. Also note that developer1 can easily run the focused integration tests that involve that procedure or area of the database many times / which is a lot more likely to happen than doing the same with full system tests.
You can do either automated unit testing using tools such as NUnit or automated black-box testing using tools such as Selenium. Note that both options (even with free tools) may need significant investment in terms of time and efforts. Typically, unit test cases are created by developers them selves while for automated black box testing, a separate team of QA is utilized - this is mostly because unit test cases are generally written in languages such as C#, VB.NET while automated black-box testing tools typically utilize scripting languages.
We are in search of an automated testing tool for our project. As we are in testing department we prefer a tool which would have less programming in it. Please suggest some tools for us .Till now we are testing our application manually.
Our project is being developed in Java.
Is there any freeware tool that I could use or is it better to go for a paid tool?
Thanks in Advance.
Less programming? You'll need something like JUnit to write unit tests if you want to do serious regression testing, but unit tests require you to write some code
Here's a big list of open-source testing tools, some of them may offer what you want: http://java-source.net/open-source/testing-tools/junit
For example, T2 claims to be a random testing tool. As one, it is fully automatic, but one must keep in mind that the code coverage of random testing is in general very limited. It should be used as a complement to other testing methods. T2 checks for internal errors, run time exceptions, method specifications, and class invariant.
Not sure if you mean a CI tool or not, but we use Hudson at Zappos and it works pretty well.
http://hudson-ci.org/
..and there's also CruiseControl: http://cruisecontrol.sourceforge.net/
If you're not talking about CI, maybe you mean QA testing - in which case you should take a look at something like Selenium (for web apps):
http://seleniumhq.org/
If you're doing GUI testing? I'm not really familiar with that area, but I've heard about WinRunner and Rational:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HP_WinRunner
http://www-01.ibm.com/software/rational/offerings/quality/
..though neither are really free tools. Something like AutoIT might help you move widgets around, but it lacks the reporting parts:
http://www.autoitscript.com/autoit3/index.shtml
There could be two answer to you question:
Besides Selenium, though it has ample of advantages, I am reading about another tool which uses same API which Selenium use. The only changes in API I have seen so far is it reduces the complexity of functions thus making it more easier and simpler for user who is learning.
The tool is called 'Helium' and it has 50% (and more) less complex functions and code as Selenium has.
The only problem with this tool is it is paid tool for learning purpose and for implementing not-so-big scale project you can use it. But yeah after some time its gonna cost you.
I have implemented some code on Helium. Please let me know , if you face any issue initially or you are thinking to implement it.
Other being, you can use Selenium Builder(http://khyatisehgal.wordpress.com/2014/05/26/selenium-builder-exporting-and-execution/) which is an advanced form of Selenium IDE. It imports your command in different languages and does work more effectively and efficiently as Selenium IDE does(http://khyatisehgal.wordpress.com/2014/05/25/selenium-builder/) . So you can import scripts in Eclipse IDE and just execute them as is.
Please let me know , if you have any doubt in any of the tool.
We're in the initial stages of a large project, and have decided that some form of automated UI testing is likely going to be useful for us, but have not yet sorted out exactly how this is going to work...
The primary goal is to automate a basic install and run-through of the app, so if a developer causes a major breakage (eg: app won't install, network won't connect, window won't display, etc) the testers don't have to waste their time (and get annoyed by) installing and configuring a broken build
A secondary goal is to help testers when dealing with repetitive tasks.
My question is: Who should create these kinds of tests? The implicit assumption in our team has been that the testers will do it, but everything I've read on the net always seems to imply that the developers will create them, as a kind of 'extended unit test'.
Some thoughts:
The developers seem to be in a much better position to do this, given that they know control ID's, classes, etc, and have a much better picture of how the app is working
The testers have the advantage of NOT knowing how the app is working, and hence can produce tests which may be much more useful
I've written some initial scripts using IronRuby and White. This has worked really well, and is powerful enough to do literally anything, but then you need to be able to write code to write the UI tests
All of the automated UI test tools we've tried (TestComplete, etc) seem to be incredibly complex and fragile, and while the testers can use them, it takes them about 100 times longer and they're constantly running into "accidental complexity" caused by the UI test tools.
Our testers can't code, and while they're plenty smart, all I got were funny looks when I suggested that testers could potentially write simple ruby scripts (even though said scripts are about 100x easier to read and write than the mangled mess of buttons and datagrids that seems to be the standard for automated UI test tools).
I'd really appreciate any feedback from others who have tried UI automation in a team of both developers and testers. Who did what, and did it work well? Thanks in advance!
Edit: The application in question is a C# WPF "rich client" application which connects to a server using WCF
Ideally it should really be QA who end up writing the tests. The problem with using a programmatic solution is the learning curve involved in getting the QA people up to speed with using the tool. Developers can certainly help with this learning curve and help the process by mentoring, but it still takes time and is a drag on development.
The alternative is to use a simple GUI tool which backs a language (and data scripts) and enables QA to build scripts visually, delving into the finer details of the language only when really necessary - development can also get involved here also.
The most successful attempts I've seen have definitely been with the latter, but setting this up is the hard part. Selenium has worked well for simple web applications and simple threads through the application. JMeter also (for scripted web conversations for web services) has worked well... Another option which is that of in house built test harness - a simple tool over the top of a scripting language (Groovy, Python, Ruby) that allows QA to put test data into the application either via a GUI or via data files. The data files can be simple properties files, or in more complex cases structured (something like YAML or even Excel) data files. That way they can build the basic smoke tests to start, and later expand that into various scenario driven tests.
Finally... I think rich client apps are way more difficult to test in this way, but it depends on the nature of the language and the tools available to you...
In my experience, testers who can code will switch jobs for a pay raise as developers.
I agree with you on the automated UI testing tools. Every place I've worked that was rich enough to afford WinRunner or LoadRunner couldn't afford the staff to actually use it. The prices may have changed, but back then, these were in the high 5-digit to low 6-digit price tags (think of the price of a starter home). The products were hard to use, and were usually kept uninstalled in a locked cabinet because everyone was afraid of getting in trouble for breaking them.
I worked over 7 years as an application developer before I finally switched to testing and test automation. Testing is much more challenging than coding, and any automation developer who wants to succeed should master testing skills.
Some time ago I put my thoughts on skill matrices in a couple of blog posts.
If interested to discuss:
http://automation-beyond.com/2009/05/28/qa-automation-skill-matrices/
Thanks.
I think having the developers write the tests will be of the most use. That way, you can get "breakage checking" throughout your dev cycle, not just at the end. If you do nightly automated builds, you can catch and fix bugs when they're small, before they grow into huge, mean, man-eating bugs.
What about the testers proposing the tests, and the developers actually writing it ?
I believe at first it largely depends on the tools you use.
Our company currently uses Selenium (We're a Java shop).
The Selenium IDE (which records actions in Firefox) works OK, but developers need to manually correct mistakes it makes against our webapps, so it's not really appropriate for QA to write tests with.
One thing I tried in the past (with some success), was to write library functions as wrappers for Selenium functions. They read as plain english:
selenium.clickButton("Button Text")
...but behind the scenes check for proper layout and tags on the button, has an id etc.
Unfortunately this required a lot of set up to allow easy writing of tests.
I recently became aware of a tool called Twist (from Thoughtworks, built on the Eclipse engine), which is a wrapper for Selenium, allowing plain English style tests to be written. I am hoping to be able to supply this to the testers, who can write simple assertions in plain English!
It automatically creates stubs for new assertions too, so the testers could write the tests, and pass them to developers if they need new code.
I've found the most reasonable option is to have enough specs such that the QA folks can stub out the test, basically figure out what they want to test at each 'screen' or on each component, and stub those out. The stubs should be named such that they're very descriptive as to what they're testing. This also offers a way to crystalize functional requirements. In fact, doing the requirements in this fashion are particularly easy, and help non-technical people really work through the muddy waters of their own though process.
The stubs can be filled in via a combination of QA/dev people. This allows you to CHEAPLY train QA people as to how to write tests, and they typically slurp it up as it furthers their job security.
I think it depends mostly on the skill level of your test team, the tools available, and the team culture with respect to how developers and testers interact with each other. My current situation is that we have a relatively technical test team. All testers are expected to have development skills. In our case, testers write UI Automation. If your test team doesn't have those skills they will not be set up for success. In that case, it may be best for developers to write you UI automation.
Other factors to consider:
What other testing tasks are on the testers' plate?
Who are your customers and what are their expectations related to quality?
What is the skill level of the development team and what is their willingness to take on test automation work?
-Ron