Do you know The Best Automation Testing Tools for 2018?

Software development practices change over time, so do tools and technologies. These changes are aimed at improving productivity, quality and customer satisfaction, to reduce the delivery time increasingly shorter and to offer successful products and services. Software testing plays the main role in achieving all of the above mentioned objectives.

The 2017-2018 World Quality Report recently published by Capgemini, Sogeti and Micro Focus points out several interesting trends in softwarequality and testing. Two of the three key trends are increasing the automation of tests and the widespread adoption of agile methodologies and DevOps.

As the report shows, organizations need intelligent automation and intelligent analytics to accelerate decision making and validation, and to better address the challenges of testing smarter devices and products that are highly integrated and continually changing. The report also suggests the need for intelligent test platforms that are self-aware and self-adaptive to support the full life cycle of the application.

In the automation of testing landscape, automation tools are central. This blog gives the entire summary of some important testing automation tools and frameworks which have the potential to help businesses position themselves better to keep up with latest trends in software testing. This list includes both open source and commercial software testing automation solutions.

1. Selenium

 

  

Selenium is possibly the most popular open source testing automation framework for web applications. Originated in the 2000s and evolved over a decade, Selenium has been an automation framework of choice for web automation testers, especially for those who possess advanced programming and scripting skills. Selenium has become a central framework for other open source testing automation tools such as Katalon Studio, Watir, Transporter and Robot Framework.

Selenium is compatible with multiple system environments (Windows, Mac, Linux) and browsers (Chrome, Firefox, IE and browsers without a head). Its scripts can be written in several programming languages ​​such as Java, Groovy, Python, C #, PHP, Ruby and Perl.

While evaluators have flexibility with Selenium and can write complex and advanced test scripts to meet various levels of complexity, advanced programming and effort skills are required to build automation frameworks and libraries for specific testing needs.

License: Open Source

2. UFT

Unified Functional Testing (UFT) is a well-known commercial testing tool for functional tests. It provides a complete set of features for APIs, web services and GUI tests of desktop, web and mobile applications on all platforms. The tool has an object recognition function based on advanced images, reusable test components and automated documentation.

UFT uses Visual Basic Scripting Edition to register object testing and control processes. UFT is integrated with Mercury Business Process Testing and Mercury Quality Center. The tool supports CI through integration with CI tools such as Jenkins.

License: Free

3. Katalon Studio 

Katalon Studio is a powerful test automation solution for web applications, mobile devices and web services. Being built on the Selenium and Appium frameworks, Katalon Studio takes advantage of these solutions for integrated software automation.

The tool supports different levels of test skill set. Non-programmers may find it easy to start an automation test project (such as using Object Spy to record test scripts), while programmers and advanced automation testers can save time by building new libraries and maintaining their scripts.

Katalon Studio can be integrated into CI / CD processes and works well with popular tools in the quality control process, such as qTest, JIRA, Jenkins and Git. It offers a nice feature called Katalon Analytics that gives users complete views of test execution reports through the dashboard, which includes metrics, charts and graphs.

License: Free

4. IBM Rational Functional Tester 

 
IBM RFT is a data-driven software testing platform for all types of regression and functional testing. It supports a wide range of programming applications, such as .Net, Java, SAP, Flex and Ajax. IBM RFT uses Visual Basic .Net and Java as scripting languages. IBM RFT has a unique feature called Storyboard test in which the actions of users in AUT are recorded and displayed in a storyboard format through screenshots of the application.

Another interesting feature of RFT is its integration with the lifecycle management systems of the IBM Jazz application, such as IBM Rational Team Concert and Rational Quality Manager.

License: Commercial


5. Watir 

 
 
 Watir is an open source software automation testing tool for web automation testing based on Ruby libraries. Watir supports cross web browser tests that include Firefox, Opera, and IE. It is also compatible with data-based tests and is integrated with BBD tools such as RSpec, Cucumber and Test / Unit.

License: Open Source

6. TestPlant eggPlant  

An image-based software automated functional test tool that allows testers to interact with AUT in the same way that end users do. TestPlant eggPlant is completely different from traditional test tools in its approach: modeling the user's point of view rather than the view of test scripts often seen by evaluators. This allows software testers with less knowledge in programming skills to learn and apply test automation in an easy way. The tool is compatible with various platforms, such as the web, mobile devices and POS systems. It offers laboratory administration and CI integration as well.

License: Commercial
 
7. TestComplete 

TestComplete from SmartBear is a powerful commercial testing tool for web, mobile and desktop testing. TestComplete supports several scripting languages such as JavaScript, VBScript, Python and C ++ Script. Like Katalon Studio, evaluators can perform keyword-based and data-based tests with TestComplete. The tool also offers an easy-to-use recording and playback feature.

Similar to UTF, TestComplete's UI object recognition capability can detect and update UI objects automatically, which helps in reducing the effort for maintaining test scripts when the AUT is changed. It also integrates with Jenkins in an IC process.

License: Commercial 

8. Ranorex 
 Ranorex is a complete commercial software automation tool for web apps, mobile apps and desktop tests. The tool provides many advanced features for recognition of UI, test scripts can be reused and playback and recording. The creation of tests without code is also a very useful feature that allows new automation verifiers to learn and apply test automation to their projects.

The tool supports Selenium integration for testing web applications. Evaluators can distribute the execution of their tests between various platforms and browsers using the Selenium network. Ranorex offers a model of low prices for companies.

License: Commercial

9. Robot Framework 

Robot Framework is an open source automation framework that implements the keyword-based approach for acceptance testing and development based on acceptance testing (ATDD). Robot Framework provides frameworks for different testing automation needs. But its test capacity can be further expanded by implementing additional test libraries using Python and Java. Selenium WebDriver is a popular external library used in the Robot Framework.

Test engineers can take advantage of the Robot Framework as an automation framework not only for web testing, but also for the automation of Android and iOS tests. Robot Framework can be easy to learn for evaluators who are familiar with keyword-based tests.
License: Open Source 

 
10. Tricentis Tosca 

Tricentis Tosca is a software testing automation tool which is model-based which provides a many great set of features for testing continuously, including analysis, dashboards and integrations for supporting methodologies of Agile and DevOps.

Tricentis Tosca helps users optimize the reuse of test assets. Like many other test automation tools, it supports a wide range of technologies and applications, such as web, mobile devices and APIs. Tricentis Tosca also has characteristics for integration management, risk analysis and distributed execution.

License: Commercial

Conclusion
As you can see, each of the above mentioned software automation tools has its own unique features to offer for addressing the growing challenges of software automation in the next coming years. Most provide great features for testing continuously and integration, test management and preparing reports. All of them are compatible with the required needs of automation for web app and mobile app tests. However, intelligent testing and intelligent analysis for adaptive and heterogeneous environments are still something desirable for in software automation testing tools.