AIJRFANS19-

American International Journal of Research in Formal, Applied & Natural Sciences Available online at http://www.iasir.net ISSN (Print): 2328-3777, ISSN (Online): 2328-3785, ISSN (CD-ROM): 2328-3793 AIJRFANS is a refereed, indexed, peer-reviewed, multidisciplinary and open access journal published by International Association of Scientific Innovation and Research (IASIR), USA (An Association Unifying the Sciences, Engineering, and Applied Research) Comparison of Software Test Automation Tools- Selenium and UFT M. Karthik1 ,Jananisivapriya VK2, Assistant Professor, Department of Computer Science, D. B. Jain College, Chennai, Tamilnadu, India 2 M.Phil Research Scholar, Department of Computer Science, D.B. Jain College, Chennai, Tamilnadu, India 1 Abstract: In the Software Development Life cycle (SDLC), testing plays a crucial role in order to deliver high quality Software Products. As the competition in the IT sector grows, the pressure to deliver high quality products in large numbers with minimum resources and also in limited time is increasing in intensity. During the software development process, software tests need to be repeated to ensure quality of the software product. For each delivered build as a result of source code modification, test cases must be executed. Based on the test strategy, the test iterations need to be executed on multiple supported browsers and Operating systems. Performing this task manually or the manual execution of test cases is a time consuming process, increases cost to the company and also error prone. Automation testing overcomes these challenges incurred in manual testing.Automation testing is performed with the help of automation tools. There are many tools available for software test automation. This paper presents the comparative study of two automation test tools called Selenium and UFT (Unified Functional Testing) based on different parameters. Keywords: UFT, Selenium, SDLC, Software Testing, Automation Testing, Testcases Introduction The main objective of Software testing is to find defects in a project created by a programmer during project development. In testing, the product is checked and evaluated in order to maintain quality of final product and to verify that every part of project meets the requirements as specified in the Product Requirement Document (PRD). It is part of SDLC. Testing can be done in two ways such as manual testing and Automation testing. The type of testing is decided based on project requirement, budget associated with project and also which testing is benefited for the project. Manual testing is costly and time consuming exercise and also prone to error. Automation testing on the other hand finds defects which are overlooked or missed during manual testing. Automation testing helps testing team by automating repetitive tasks and enabling the team to look into challenging and high risk projects. It is critical to identify the right automation tool in order to ensure the success of the testing project. The overall project budget is the key deciding factor for implementing automation. There are both free tools and paid tools available for automation testing in the market. AIJRFANS 19-212; © 2019, AIJRFANS All Rights Reserved Page 45 Karthik et al., American International Journal of Research in Formal, Applied & Natural Sciences, 26(1), March-May 2019, pp. 45-48 In the automated testing tools market, the majority of the tools market share is acquired by Unified Functional Testing and Selenium. For Tools selection, various automation tools need to be analyzed and the key parameters related to the tools are compared. Selenium: Selenium is an open-source automated testing toolwhich does not require the purchase of license. In the cost consuming test automation space, Quality Assurance decision makers always feel good if something comes to them as a freebie. Selenium is the most powerful Automation tool available which is based on java scripting to a large extent. It is widely used in agile methodology of coding and testing. Multi browser support is an important feature of Selenium. HP Unified Functional Testing (UFT): It is a licensed tool owned by HP, one of the most popular tools available in the market. This licensed testing tool is closed source in nature and license has to be purchased to utilize their functionalities to full extent. For Functional Automation testing, the most dominant commercial player in the market is UFT. It is an extremely user-friendly and easy tool that works well with Windows & Web based applications.After executing the test cases, the Actual and expected results are compared and the results are summarized and reported in the execution summary details. Each and every page navigated during test execution will be stored as a screenshot in UFT. This AIJRFANS 19-212; © 2019, AIJRFANS All Rights Reserved Page 46 Karthik et al., American International Journal of Research in Formal, Applied & Natural Sciences, 26(1), March-May 2019, pp. 45-48 could beproof for completion of testing, and also the screenshots can be referred later if there is any need to refer them. Comparison Matrix: Parameters/Criteria Selenium UFT Software Cost Environment Support Application support Browsers-support Record-Playback License & Annual maintenance fees Windows Only Web and Windows based applications IE,Firefox,Chrome Is Supported Script-language Script creation time Object recognition Learning time Script execution speed Open source and Free of cost Windows, Linux, Solaris, MAC Web applications only. Chrome,Firefox,IE,Opera,Safari Is Supported Experience needed in any of the programming languages supported by Selenium. Java, C#, Ruby, Python, PHP, Javascript Much More Selenium IDE, FireBug, Firepath Much more High Framework JUnit, NUnit, Test::Unit, TestNG, Unittest Continuous Integration Achieved through Jenkins VBScript Less Through Object Spy Less Low In-built capability to build frameworks such as keyword-driven, data-driven and hybrid Possible through Quality Center / ALM or Jenkins Windows based Application support No Yes Device support Two major mobile platforms IOS and Android Technical support No official technical support Data-Driven Framework Image based test Excel,CSV Possible, but not easy Should be very good along with technical capabilities of integrating different pieces of framework Supports IOS, Android, Blackberry and Windows Phone Good technical support via phone, mail, web forum. Excel files, text files, XML, DB files Easily Possible Ease of Use Coding Experience of Engineer Hardware resource consumption during script execution Debugging support Report Generation Reports Product Support Easy to learn in a short time Not much Low High Strong HTML Integrations with Jenkins can give good reporting &dashboard capabilities Open Source Community Strong HTML AIJRFANS 19-212; © 2019, AIJRFANS All Rights Reserved Quality center has in-built awesome dashboards HP support along with support forums Page 47 Karthik et al., American International Journal of Research in Formal, Applied & Natural Sciences, 26(1), March-May 2019, pp. 45-48 When Selenium is designed, it is exclusively designed for web-based applications. Its scopeis restricted only to web based applications. So Windows based applicationsand Mainframe related applications are not supported by selenium.Whereas UFT supports Windows based applications. Languages supported by Selenium include Java, Python, PHP, C#, Ruby, Perl and JavaScript. A programmer proficient in any of the supported language can use Selenium API to automate his web application. The Programmer can write Selenium code in JAVA or Python or PHP or C# or Ruby whichever language he is proficient with. It is the first automation tool to support these many languages. Also, the language used for automating test cases in selenium is independent with the language used to build the application under test. Example: An application built using C# can be tested with selenium test code written in JAVA. UFT supports only VBScript to write test code. The most important feature of Selenium is that it works on multiple Operating Systems like Windows, MAC, SOLARIS and LINUX. This feature makes selenium a more flexible tool.Apart from this, Selenium now supports mobile applications also. There is a tool called Appium which is an extension of selenium that supports both Android and IOS platforms.UFT works only on Windows Operating system.UFT also supports IOS, Android and Blackberry platforms for mobile applications. Selenium requires proper installation and integration of various tools for efficient use. So Learning to use Selenium tool can take more time.Example: If the tester wants to write selenium scripts in JAVA, the JAVA need to be installed first, Eclipse need to be installed and configured, Selenium needs to be downloaded and configured; Selenium Project need to be created along with class files etc.,UFT usage is simpler than Selenium. Script execution speed of Selenium is higher/faster compared to UFT. When the same scripts are executed in UFT and Selenium at the same time, the total execution time in selenium is less than the total script execution time in UFT. Multiple, simultaneous tests can be executed in selenium on a single machine. But only one application in a single machine can be tested by UFT. Also, RAM and CPU power consumption are more while executing UFT scripts than Selenium scripts. In Selenium, the test scripts can be executed on one machine and the web browsers of the application under test can be opened and the application can be tested on any number of remote machines. In order to run simultaneous tests on different machines using different browsers and different operating systems in parallel, Selenium-Grid is specifically designed.UFT can test only one application at a time on a single machine. Conclusion: As Selenium tool is an open source, it can reduce the cost but the efforts involved in scripting for selenium is morethan UFT. When data security is needed while testing, UFT is best. But cost is a major disadvantage of UFT. In the end, It is as simple between buying a branded computer desktop and assembling a desktop by own. Branded desktops has its own cost and services attached whereas in assembled desktop, the buyer need to take care of everything on his own. But, there is a hybrid solution where the buyer can prefer a custom shop to get an assembled desktop where sales and post sales support is available and pay for their services. The same concept is now applicable in IT too, such as the service provider has everything i.e. who has developed automation frameworks using different open source components, who has coders ready to put in their knowledge to the pre-existing wireframe and deliver the results. This concept is new and many companies have switched to open source frameworks built by service providers thereby reducing their overall product cost. 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Vishawjyoti and Sachin Sharma, “Study and Analysis of Automation Testing Techniques, Dept of Computer Applications”, Manav Rachna International University, Faridabad, Volume 3-No. 12, 36-4, Dec [2012]. Automation testing http://www.guru99.com/automation-testing.html AIJRFANS 19-212; © 2019, AIJRFANS All Rights Reserved Page 48