Why Open Source “Selenium” is Preferred More than Commercial?

According to a “SurveyMonkey” survey, 66.7% of the candidates, who are at the level of decision making for their Software Development Companies and participated in the survey, are using “Selenium” for their Test Automation projects. When asked about the factors which they consider while selecting an automation tool, they said that ‘cost’ is the highest priority followed by features, support, and ease of use.

It is understandable that because open source means you need not pay, Selenium is available for free.  Companies are miscalculating ROI aiming for better returns for the cost spent on their testing projects. Most companies calculate ROI by comparing Automation Testing to Manual Testing, which is not correct and they both provide different information about Application under Test.

Automation Testing ROI value is not the cost saved on multiple executions of tests manually, rather it is the benefit of automating the tests, and it can be:

• Reducing Time to Market
• Increased Test Efficiency (Productivity)
• Increased Test Effectiveness

So, the benefits of Automation Testing can be achieved whether it is Selenium or any Selenium Alternatives does not matter. But, compared to commercial tools, organizations consider Selenium because of other benefits.

Selenium supports multiple programming languages such as Java, Ruby, Python, C#, Perl and PHP, so it supports the user choice of IDE to create test scripts. Most of the Selenium Alternatives for Automation Testing tools don't support such wide range of programming languages and their built-in IDEs for test script creation won’t be as good as the leading IDEs.

Selenium, with its “Page Objects” concept, has the superiority in terms of objects when compared to Commercial tools’ “Record and Playback” – using which users generate test scripts. The advantage here is “the script maintenance” as the number of test scripts grows in a test suite. If there is any change in a web page element which is used in multiple test scripts, then it triggers the change in those scripts which is a complicated job to do. Selenium “Page Objects” have a better approach for script maintenance, where a class file is created to find, fill and verify a set of elements; the same class file can be used in multiple scripts. If there is a change in the elements, then implementing the changes in the Page Object class file would be sufficient.

Finally, as compared to other Selenium Automation Alternatives, Selenium is becoming the choice for automation testing for most organizations as it is resilient at critical scenarios in different sizes of projects, and its compatibility with different operating systems and support for all prevailing programming languages.

Brief on Selenium Pros and Cons

Pros

• Choice of programming languages to write test scripts
• Plenty of tutorials for getting started
• Widely used and well supported by community

Cons

• Dependent on the third party for reports and test management
• Selenium compatibility to browser’s latest updates
• High learning technical curve
• Change in Management and Versioning is a challenge
• It gets difficult when dealing with AJAX heavy web applications.

ClicTest – a Seamless Software Testing Solution

Automation testing with “ClicTest” can be done without automation expertise, and even manual testers or subject matter experts can do automation testing.

ClicTest Advantages:

• Automation Engineer will not have knowledge about the domain and end users of the application. Subject Matter Experts and Test Engineers will not have automation expertise and they can use ClicTest without that expertise.
• ClicTest has Test Management module, which makes reporting and execution much simpler.
• ClicTest is available on “Pay for what you Test” and in addition, maintenance/support is also offered.
• ClicTest presents a superior ROI because each business event is designed, automated and maintained well.
• With ClicTest, reduce the cost as well as time spent on maintaining and updating tests.
• Test cases can easily be copied and versions can also be compared.
• Test teams become capable of creating automated tests without programming knowledge.
• Test cases are created effortlessly with captured objects and reusable keywords.
• ClicTest maintains traceability from Test Cases to Test Suites and requirements.

Properly implemented Test Automation further improves ROI and ClicTest is one such tool to do that.

What makes ClicTest to be chosen over Selenium?

Foremost, ClicTest has evolved to empower manual testers and subject-matter experts to do automation testing, where there won’t be a need of technical knowledge and programming expertise. As manual testers, who are the backbone for the quality of an application/software and carry vast knowledge on the software, are on the verge of becoming automation test developers where they have to learn programming to create automation test scripts. So, the highest goal of ClicTest is empowering manual testers to leverage their knowledge of a software to test through Manual testing practice and Automation testing practice.

When both manual testing and automation testing practices are in place, then organizations can achieve the highest possible quality before a software release.

Can ClicTest satisfy all those aspects which Selenium gives to an organization to choose it?

ClicTest requires no programming expertise and empowers manual testers to do automation testing. This feature of ClicTest equals Selenium choice of programming languages. ClicTest intuitive “Object Identifier” with an option to capture objects and add them to an object page equals Selenium “Page Objects” concept.

ClicTest requires no installation and it is 100% web based automation testing tool which enables anywhere anytime testing. It also works across operating systems – Windows, Linux and Mac, and browsers and browser versions.

What are those aspects to choose ClicTest over Selenium?

ClicTest edges over Selenium in terms of cost: The need for programming to create automation test scripts make the testers "Automation Test Developers" and hiring developers is an expensive thing for an organization. Automation Test Developers focus on developing test scripts than on covering all the test scenarios to make an Application under Test (AUT) defect free and to improve the quality of AUT. ClicTest gives cost advantage and enables the testers, who have the knowledge of the software, to leverage their existing manual testing skill for automation testing.

ClicTest edges over Selenium in terms of objects and script maintenance: ClicTest “Object Categorize” gives an advantage over Selenium in terms of objects, by helping in editing test steps across test cases in a bulk; thus, having greater test case maintenance over Selenium.

Selenium test scripts aren’t easy to comprehend, so a tester, who is not the owner of the script, cannot edit the script when there is a change. This increases the challenge of test maintenance when the number of test scripts is high, and multiple testing teams are working on the same testing project. Whereas, ClicTest automation test cases look similar to manual test cases, and they are easy to comprehend. So, testers who are not the owner of the test case can leverage the edit option to edit test cases when there is a change. Thus, ClicTest provides the leverage which multiple testing teams require when they are working on the same project for achieving faster time to market.

ClicTest edges over Selenium in terms of technical challenges: Selenium works from the client side, so Selenium test scripts execution may face a challenge during execution if there is a delay in page load due to network or other technical issues. To mitigate that, a delay function should be added to delay the time between two instructions. Despite contributing the effort in scripting to delay, the challenge still exists if the delay is too small and it also impacts the execution and execution time. ClicTest has an option to provide “Wait Time” as a delay without any scripting and addresses all the technical challenges during execution.

ClicTest edges over Selenium in terms of complementing Agile: Selenium test scripts are saved as simple files with no attributes to identify, this increases the complication to the main test suite for different types of testing activities. Whereas ClicTest has a good mechanism to manage test cases and test suites, ClicTest test management is empowered with version control mechanism with version comparison at test case and test suite levels.

In an agile environment, each release would entail either a newly added functionality or a defect fix to existing functionality or a change in functionality. This triggers a modification to an existing test case and if all these modifications aren’t maintained as versions, then there might arise possibility where tester may get confused to pick up the latest one for execution. ClicTest version control mechanism helps in addressing such challenges in agile. Alongside, ClicTest can give you a comparison of versions of a test case; thus, you will have better insights on the changes of a test case across the versions.

ClicTest has the ability to version a test suite by adding required test case versions for the execution. Version control mechanism even at the test suite level provides the leverage to maintain different versions of test suites to be executed for different software releases.

ClicTest edges over Selenium in terms of reporting: Reporting plays a vital role in automation testing. Though Selenium can be integrated with Testing and Extended Reports, it lacks the capability to provide insights on different test cycles execution results, especially regression test cycles. Whereas, ClicTest has the capability to compare results of test suite execution cycles.

ClicTest advanced reports such as Project Efficiency, Resource Efficiency, Project Status (Deviation with percentage), Predictive Metrics, and Review Efficiency provide the insights that come handy while planning testing activities and enables the team to take proactive decisions to meet end goals on time.

ClicTest edges over Selenium in terms using existing automation test cases: ClicTest allows leveraging existing automation test cases to use as an input to create performance test scenarios. Using automation test cases for performance testing saves a lot of time and effort in creating performance test scenarios.

Feature Comparison

Conclusion

ClicTest handles all types of complexities an application under test has to face, allowing functional users (subject matter experts or domain experts) to automate functional testing without any hassle. ClicTest is a seamless Cloud based Script-Less Software Testing Solution that can save 40% on Software Testing Cost.