DEV Community: Cody Simons

Smarter Test Execution with Dynamic Test Suites and Global Variables

Cody Simons — Mon, 17 Jan 2022 07:37:39 +0000

"Delivering quality at speed has become part of the quality assurance lexicon over the past few years. However, as manual work remains “unskippable” in different steps of our test cycles, the goal of running more tests in a shorter time might seem to be out of reach.

Today’s article will walk you through the latest features of Katalon Recorder 5.6 and explain how they help reduce manual efforts and shorten your next test cycles."
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Top DevOps Tools

Cody Simons — Mon, 17 Jan 2022 07:33:55 +0000

"DevOps is a practice, not a tool, but tools are needed to implement it. Breaking down walls of communication and creating visibility and trust across all the teams involved in delivering software and technology is challenging. The right tools make the automation and integrations needed across functional teams seamless, open, and scalable."
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Moving At DevOps Speed With In Sprint Automation

Cody Simons — Mon, 17 Jan 2022 07:32:00 +0000

"From the traditional Waterfall model to more iterative approaches like Agile and DevOps, software testing is constantly evolving. And while teams have worked their way to deliver quality at speed, there seems to be something holding them back. Read on to learn about in-sprint automation and why it’s the key to moving at DevOps speed."
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Top 15 List of Automation Testing Tools

Cody Simons — Mon, 17 Jan 2022 07:30:26 +0000

"Automation Testing Tools – How to Choose The Right One
Automation testing tools are applications designed to verify function and/or non-functional requirements via automated test scripts.

With the Agile and DevOps manifesto as the standard of software testing, setting a clear-cut automation testing tools evaluation strategy is key. Ultimately, this strategy will need to answer the questions of:

What features are you looking for?
Who’s going to use the tool for testing? Devs or QA teams?
Can it be integrated with CI/CD pipelines or toolchains?
Is it easy to maintain scripts and reuse test assets?
What is your team’s budget?
Where can you get support for technical issues?

Plus, there isn’t really a one-size-fits-all automation tool. It really boils down to your team’s specific needs."
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Top 10 Free Open-Source Testing Tools, Framework & Libraries

Cody Simons — Fri, 07 Jan 2022 09:09:25 +0000

Free open-source frameworks, libraries, and tools are the go-to solutions for automation testing.

The main difference between these is knowing your preference between building a brand new test automation framework using libraries or working with a made-ready tool where testing is all you will have to care about.

This article gives you a quick glance at the Top 10 Free and Open Source Testing Tools, Framework and Libraries.

Automated vs. Manual Testing: When and Why?

Cody Simons — Fri, 07 Jan 2022 08:14:14 +0000

"Testing is the backbone of the Agile software development methodology. The efficiency of the testing process directly impacts the quality of the deliverables and the goodwill of the organization. Buggy software can lead to poor user experience, delayed project timelines, diminished brand value, and revenue losses."

The Different Types of Automation Testing: The Guide for Beginners

Cody Simons — Wed, 05 Jan 2022 09:15:47 +0000

What is automation testing?

Imagine you own a software application, and you don’t have another choice besides verifying the system’s functionality by conducting an enormous number of test cases manually. That sounds so frustrating, and it is going to take you a lot of time. Therefore, test automation was created to tackle this problem.
Nowadays, automated testing is rising significantly and changing the way people think about software testing. Unlike manual testing, automation testing uses powerful tools to automatically control and execute the test cases. It allows the testers to simplify the repetitive test suite and boost bug fixes and detection efficiency, thus saving tremendous time and human effort.
This article helps you to understand more about automation testing and different types of test automation.

Types of automation testing

Which test cases can be automated?

Test automation is a powerful technique that helps to enhance the efficiency of the testing process. It is fantastic, but not all test cases can be automated. To select suitable test cases to be automated using the following criteria:

Test cases are critical to the business
Repeated test cases
Test cases that are difficult to execute manually (Multilingual testing…)
Test cases which demand a tremendous amount of time.

Types of testing

There are two main types of testing, which are functional and non-functional testing.

Functional testing: Functional testing was executed to test the business aspects of the application to make sure that the functionality meets the expected requirements. Functional testing checks WHAT the system does
Non-functional testing: Evaluates the performance, security and data storage, etc., of the application and compares with the expected results.Non-functional testing checks HOW well the system performs.

Example of functional and non-functional testing:
Airbnb is an online marketplace connecting travelers with local hosts. Functional testing will test the critical features of Airbnb (connecting the owner with the people who are looking for accommodation). Non-functional testing will test the security of owner-renter financial transactions and how fast and precise the application works.

Types of tests

There are five main types of tests:

Smoke tests: Smoke testing is carried out to verify the most central features to ensure no problem in further testing.
Integration tests: A test case consists of separate modules that must be tested as a whole to ensure smooth integration between them.
Security tests: This identifies the loopholes and exposes all the vulnerabilities in the whole system.
Performance tests: help the tester to check out the speed, responsiveness, stability, extensibility, and efficiency of the software. The goal of performance testing is to eliminate performance bottlenecks.
Acceptance tests: This is the final step before launching the software to end-users. These tests determine how end-users accept our products.

Phases of testing:

Unit: This is the very beginning level of testing, which tests the single units of the application. Unit tests can be done both manually and automatically by the developers before moving to the next phase to the testers.
API: API stands for Application Programming Interface, which plays the role of an intermediary between two different software systems. API evaluates the integration between two layers in terms of reliability, performance, communication, and data transmission. This phase is pretty flexible. It can be conducted before or after the UI test.
UI: User interface testing is the phase of the business mindset that was taken into consideration. It was tested at the end of the process. The tester tries to replicate the most accurate user experience possible to examine the user's interaction with the system before launching the product.

Automation testing frameworks

The test framework is not a tool or process; it is a compilation of various tools, processes to make the whole automation process easier to accomplish.
Test framework maintains the consistency of the process, making non-technical testers catch up with the entire workflow. Thus, it also improves the usability of codes and the test structure. Without a test framework, it is something like organizing the work out of control. It would be a disaster that affects the success of the entire team.
With those potential benefits, such a mistake if we don’t take test frameworks into account:

Types of framework

Record and playback framework
This is the easiest type of framework to apply. It’s mostly used for simple applications or beginners, just like making a video clip and then records and playback in different events and situations. Testers write a series of test scripts in advance and run the same test scripts in other test cases.
Modular automation framework
In the modular framework, the test cases were divided into small and independent modules or clusters. The tester also builds the test scripts to handle particular modules. These scripts can be unified by the master scripts to test the integration among the modules. The advantages of modular automation frameworks are flexible, easy to maintain, and scalable.
Data-driven automation framework
Data-Driven Automation Framework is a special technique that is able to separate the data set from the actual test case. With this unique technique, you can modify the test case in a specific functionality without changing the test scripts.

Tools to use for automated tests

There are plenty of automated testing tools available in the market. Choosing the right tools to conduct your test cases is very important based on your specific requirements. I want to recommend some awesome tools that may meet your critical needs.

Katalon Studio

Katalon Studio was built on top of Selenium and Appium; it not only preserves the best quality of Selenium and Appium but also extends the abilities of them. Katalon generates automated tests easily for all platforms and operating systems with complex applications.
https://www.katalon.com/

Selenium

Selenium is the open-source software that is the most popular automated testing tool in the market. Selenium is amazingly flexible, and it can support most of the programming languages (C#, Groovy, Java, Pearl, PHP, Python, and Scala) and operating systems (Windows, Mac, and Linux).
selenium.dev

Appium

Appium is an open-source, cross-platform test automation tool. It focuses mainly on testing mobile applications (Android or IOS) and automates test cases for native, web, and hybrid applications. Appium can be run in multiple programming languages and operating systems.
jmeter.apache.org

Ranorex

Ranorex is an automated test that specializes in functional UI test automation. Ranorex allows users to accelerate the UI test with consistency regardless of changes during the test, thanks to Ranorex’s smart object recognition.
ranorex.com

Conclusion

We hope that this useful guide will help you understand more about the types of automation testing and automation test frameworks. We also suggested some automated testing tools that are perhaps available to your application. If you see this article as useful, please share it with your friends and stay tuned to update our next article.

TestOps: The Future of Software Testing

Cody Simons — Fri, 17 Dec 2021 13:20:01 +0000

Although terms like “quality testing” may seem modern, software testing has been around since the advent of computing roughly 70 years ago. Harvard University scientist Grace Murray coined the terms “bugging” and “debugging” in 1947 when a literal “bug” — in this case, a moth — got stuck in the computer circuitry and interrupted a connection. Since then, software testing has evolved rapidly with the increasing complexity of computer applications, and it continues to evolve. Nowadays there are many different software testing approaches, depending on the functionality of the software and what you want to test it for, but the overall goal of any software test is to provide an objective assessment of the quality of the software and the risk of its failure. As the capabilities and intricacies of computer software have grown, testing has, by necessity, become its own field, to the point where it can and should be operationalized to be done correctly.

This article discusses modern testing operations, or TestOps, and provides a definition of TestOps, reviews the difference between TestOps and DevOps, and explains what to look for in a TestOps solution.

Test Orchestration: What, Why, and How

Cody Simons — Fri, 17 Dec 2021 10:20:18 +0000

In the agile development methodology, the velocity of testing holds the key to delivering the best quality software within the stipulated budget and time constraints. As such, this drives the need to automate the testing process. Most software development teams visualize test automation as a discreet step in the delivery lifecycle instead of viewing it as a designed sequence of steps. There are various aspects of testing through which software needs to pass, such as unit testing, functional testing, integration testing, smoke testing, performance testing, and more. Each of these needs to be automated in order to achieve certainty of software behavior and reduce the time to test. However, simply automating the tests is not enough to achieve the desired levels of quality and reduction in the time and cost to get there. This is where test orchestration plays an essential role.
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How to Build a Successful DevOps Testing Strategy for Agile Teams

Cody Simons — Thu, 09 Dec 2021 09:17:28 +0000

As the definition suggests, speed and reliability are the two main objectives in a DevOps testing strategy.

The traditional independent-working mindset would be removed by tightening the Dev (development) and Ops (operations) functions together. The process, in turn, makes tight delivery schedules for processes at scale less of a nightmare.
How to Build a Successful DevOps Testing Strategy for Agile Teams

Kick-Start Automation Testing With Katalon Recorder

Cody Simons — Tue, 07 Dec 2021 07:53:06 +0000

Software testing was initially a manual activity, however, due to the importance of speedy delivery, the transition to automation testing is predictable.

Suppose you are a manual tester (or developer) seeking an automation solution to speed up your project. There’s no surprise that your first instinct would be to find tools that are easy to get started with and require the slightest effort to be integrated into workflows.

On the flip side, sustainability counts. You need a stepping stone to kick-start automation with ease, but it should be sustainable enough to pave the way for your dynamic growth in the future.

This is the dilemma automation testing beginners face: How to find an automation solution that is easy to kick-start and can accommodate future needs.

The Release of Selenium 4 (and 4.1) | Top Features to Look Into

Cody Simons — Mon, 29 Nov 2021 10:03:13 +0000

"The first-ever release of Selenium WebDriver 1.0 in 2007 has indented a lasting footprint in web automated testing. And through the years, the contributions of the Selenium project (WebDriver, Grid, and IDE) have truly transformed the way that we do quality assurance.

Fast forward to the ‘drop-in’ release of Selenium 4 and Selenium 4.1, this article narrows down the top 5 changes you need to know for WebDriver, IDE, and Grid."
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