Today, almost all software applications are built as web-based applications to be run on an Internet browser. The effectiveness of testing these web-applications varies widely from companies to companies. In the world of highly interactive and responsive software processes where many organizations are using some form of vigorous methodology, test automation is frequently becoming a requirement for testing software projects in almost every organization. Test automation is often the answer. Test automation means, run repeatable tests against the application to be tested using a software tool. For regression testing the automation provides more responsiveness.
There are many advantages of automation testing. Most of them are related to the repeatability of the tests and the speed at which the tests are executed. There are a number of commercial and open source tools available in the market to assist with the development of test automation of software. Selenium is probably the most widely used open source program. This article will give you a basic understanding of Selenium and its related tools.
About Selenium
Selenium is an open-source tool that is used for test automation of web applications. It is licensed under Apache License 2.0. Selenium is a suite of tools that helps in automating only web applications. This article will give you a basic understanding of Selenium and its related tools. It has capabilities to operate across different browsers and operating systems. Selenium isn’t just a single tool but a full package of numerous tools that helps testers to automate web-based applications more efficiently.
Selenium IDE
Selenium Integrated Development Environment (IDE) is a prototyping tool for building scripts after testing a software. It is a Firefox plugin and provides an easy-to-use interface for developing automated test results. Selenium IDE has a special recording feature, which helps to records user actions as they are performed and then exports them as a reusable script in one of many programming languages that can be executed later.
Tool | Description |
Selenium IDE | Selenium Integrated Development Environment (IDE) is a Firefox plugin that allows testers to record their actions as they follow the workflow that they need to test. |
Selenium RC | Selenium Remote Control (RC) is the flagship testing framework that allow more than simple browser actions and linear execution. It makes use of the full power of programming languages such as Java, C#, PHP, Python, Ruby and PERL to build more complex tests. |
Selenium WebDriver | Selenium WebDriver is the successor to Selenium RC which sends commands directly to the browser and retrieves results of the testing operations. |
Selenium Grid | Selenium Grid is a tool used to run parallel tests across different machines and different browsers simultaneously which results in less execution time. |
Advantages of Selenium
•Selenium is an open-source tool.
•It can be extended for various technologies that expose DOM.
•It has capabilities to execute scripts across different browsers and different machines.
•It can execute scripts on various operating systems.
•It can support almost all mobile devices.
•It executes tests within the browser, so focus is NOT required while execution of script is in progress.
•It can execute many tests in parallel with the use of Selenium Grids.
Disadvantages of Selenium
•It supports only web based applications.
•It has no features such as Object Repository/Recovery Scenario.
•It has No IDE, so the script development won't be as others.
•It cannot access controls within the browser.
•It has no default test report generation functionality.
•Users has to rely on the programming language, for parameterization.
So, this is the Basic knowledge about the Selenium that can be very useful for Automation Testing. After having all pros and cons known to you, now can decide which tool to use according to your needs.
Ask your questions in comments if you have any doubt.
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