Automation Testing came into the picture when it became cumbersome to test an application with multiple input fields to be filled manually. Soon, testers were worn out, and their attention started to waver leading to unattended bugs. In this blog on what is Automation testing, you will get a brief overview of Automation Testing, its types, and so on. To know more, keep reading!
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What is Automation Testing?
Automation Testing is the method of testing software products with special testing tools and frameworks to minimize human intervention and maximize quality.
Automation Testing is done with the help of automation software, and it controls the flow of the execution of tests as per the written test scripts. They are then compared with predicted outcomes to ensure the quality and reliability of the application. With Automation Testing, one can perform necessary repetitive tasks and those tasks that are hard to achieve with manual testing. Therefore, this type of testing is critical for CI/CD pipelines.
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Why Automation Testing?
When a company develops a product, it is bound to have defects. So, before the release of the product, the company needs to capture the flaws in it to provide a seamless user experience. It is the responsibility of the testing team to perform various kinds of testing, from functional to non-functional, to ensure the effectiveness, efficiency, and better user experience of the overall product.
Though testers do Manual and Automation testing both, doing Automation Testing eases a lot of manual work, provides accurate results, and saves up a lot of time, which results in the quicker delivery of the product.
Automation Testing Life Cycle
To offer the best quality product, an organization should follow up with the step-by-step Automation Testing life cycle to pull off success in the market. Take a look at the below image that shows the six stages of Automation Testing:
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The Scope of Automation Testing
Before carrying out the testing process, one must check for the feasibility of automation. Here are the things to consider while identifying the scope of Testing Automation:
- What are the modules that can be automated?
- What are the total effective costs and the team size?
- What are the tests to be automated, and which is the approach to be taken?
Automation Testing is not possible without the right testing tool. Selecting the right tool is a critical phase in the testing life cycle where one has to consider the following points:
- Familiarity with the tool among the resources on-board
- Total budget and flexibility
- Technologies and programming languages used to build the project
- Choosing a tool that has a support team to take care of any queries and issues.
Also, check out the blog on Test Data Management.
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Automation Test Plan, Design, and Strategy
As the name suggests, in this phase, you make a plan, design the architecture, and create a strategy to achieve the goal of test automation.
- Test plan: Creation of test standards and procedures, hardware, software, and test data requirements
- Test design: Design the test architecture to determine the flow of the test procedures that follow
- Test strategy: Select a suitable test automation framework
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Setting up the Test Environment
You need to set up a remote machine or a machine where the test cases can be run. It should cover an extensive test coverage range for different test scenarios, different browsers, support desktop, and mobile applications.
Automation Test Script Execution
In this step, you will execute the test scripts and check whether the scripts run correctly or not. This step involves all the functional aspects and compatibility across multiple platforms. You also need to generate a bug report if the test case fails.
Also, learn about the different types of software testing.
Analysis and the Generation of Test Results and Test Reports
This is the last phase of the testing life cycle. Here, you will analyze the test reports to determine whether they need additional testing or not. Then, the generation of test results is done to confirm if the test scripts can identify errors in the application. Finally, the test reports are shared with the members/clients who are involved in the project.
Also, check out the blog on automation vs. manual testing.
Types of Automation Testing
When you are presented with a product, the knowledge of automation types will aid you to decide which kind of test suites you can use for automating. Automation Testing can be divided into three categories as given below:
Automation Testing Based on the Types of Testing
Now, you can check out the types of Automation Testing in the following section.
Functional Testing
Functional testing is about what the product does and verifies each function/feature of the application. It is based on customers’ requirements. With functional testing, you validate the actions that you perform in the software. It can be done manually as well as automated. An example of functional testing is testing the login functionality of a website.
Non-functional Testing
Non-functional testing is about how the product behaves and verifies the non-functional aspects, such as performance, reliability, usability, etc., of the product. It is based on customers’ expectations. With non-functional testing, you validate the performance of the software. It is hard to do manually. An example of non-functional testing is testing how long it takes for the dashboard in a website to load.
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Automation Testing Based on the Phases of Testing
Unit Testing
A unit refers to the smallest component of the software. For the entire product/software to work well, it is necessary that all the individual parts of the code work as required. Unit testing gives a granular view of how the code is performing. It has a faster execution time since you are testing only chunks of code at a time. Usually, developers prefer to perform unit testing.
API Testing
API stands for Application Programming Interface. It acts as a middle interface between the UI and the database.
API testing checks the end-to-end functionality of the application. Here, testers will not have access to the source code, and the process does not involve inputs and outputs from the keyboard. Instead, the software is made to send API calls to get the output, and the testers note the system/application response to check the functionality.
UI Testing
In UI testing, the testers look for the correctness of the visual elements such as fields, buttons, labels, links, text fields, and images on the system’s screen. These elements need to be displayed correctly and work as intended for a better user experience. UI testing also checks for the functionality of the application in handling user actions, which are done via their keyboard, mouse, and other input devices. Its main intent is to provide a friendly user interface (UI) and experience.
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Automation Testing Based on the Types of Tests
Below is a list of the tests that are common in the field of automation:
Smoke Testing
Smoke testing is also known as build verification testing (BVT). It is done in the initial stages of application testing. Whenever you add a new feature or functionality to the existing build, smoke testing is done that acts as a checkpoint to move on to the next level of testing.
Integration Testing
Integration testing is also known as I&T testing or string testing, or rarely as thread testing. It is to validate the proper communication between all the modules of the application. In other words, since the software is made up of a lot of smaller modules, in integration testing, testers logically group them and test them as groups to expose the flaws while maintaining the interaction between these software modules.
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Regression Testing
If you want to be certain whether the developed and tested software works the same way after changes have been made, then you perform regression testing. The changes can be bug fixes, configuration changes, or the enhancement of the software. You achieve this by re-running functional and non-functional tests on the application.
Security Testing
As a tester, you do not want to incur data breaches, loss of revenue, and a blow on reputation due to unauthorized access. To avoid such incidents and prevent malicious intrusion, security testing is done, which unravels the underlying risky threads, vulnerabilities, threats, malware, and other risks in the software application. Security testing helps you spot all the shortcomings and fragilities in the system’s security, which you can prevent timely by coming up with effective solutions.
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Even if your product gets a heavy workload, it needs to work without lag. So, you need to test your product before launching it for the customers to check its responsiveness, speed, stability, reliability, and robustness under a certain workload. An example of Performance Testing is checking the browser response time and the server request processing time.
Acceptance Testing
Acceptance testing is the last phase of testing before launching the product into the market. It is done to make sure all the user needs, business requirements, and the client’s demands are met and to determine if the product is fit for delivery or not.
Also, read on about End-to-End Testing.
Testing Frameworks
Let’s look at an example to learn about testing frameworks and their types.
In a classroom, you will have a few instructions to follow such as keeping the decorum of the class and avoiding unnecessary interactions with peers while the class is going on. Though it is possible to continue the class without following the instructions, it will not provide the desired results.
A testing framework does just this during the testing process. It has a set of guidelines for the professionals that include coding standards, repository management, and handling of test data to get beneficiary outcomes such as easy code reuse, reduced time to manage scripts, and high portability.
Here are the commonly used testing frameworks:
Linear Framework
This is the simplest framework of all. Under this framework, you need to write a simple code to run the test cases without any modularity or sequential steps. It works as a record-and-playback model.
Keyword-driven Framework
It is a scripting technique where you associate keywords with certain actions, such as opening or closing of a browser, mouse-click events, and others. Later on, in your test scripts, you can call these keywords to perform a specific step. Also, you will have a file where you will maintain all the keywords, along with the actions they perform.
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Data-driven Framework
In a data-driven framework, all the test case data inputs are stored in the table or in extension files, including .xls, .xml, .csv, etc. While executing the test scripts, it will read the values from the table. With the help of this framework, you can perform both positive and negative test cases.
Page Object Model Framework
In the POM framework, you will create an object repository for the web UI elements. It allows you to call these methods later on without having to write the code again. Thus, it results in less verbosity, code reusability, and reduced time-consumption to write test scripts.
Modular Framework
The modular framework allows you to divide the test scripts into small, independent modules. These modules will interact with each other in a hierarchical manner to run large test scripts. This will also help you create the required test scenarios and test the scripts individually.
Also, check out the blog on user acceptance testing.
An automation tool should be chosen based on the type of testing and the type of framework you are going to implement. There are a lot of tools available in the market for you to choose from as per your requirements. Some of the most widely used automation tools are listed below.
Selenium
It is a tool to test web applications and web browsers. It has multiple powerful tools for testing web applications. Also, it supports multiple platforms and browsers with the help of Selenium IDE.
Also, check out the blog on Select Class in Selenium.
Sikuli
Sikuli is an open-source automation testing tool used to perform GUI testing.
JMeter
It is a tool that is used for performance tests.
QuickTest Professional (QTP)
Testers use QTP to perform automated regression testing to identify gaps between the actual and desired results and detect the errors/defects that the outcome has.
JUnit and NUnit
These tools are used by professionals to perform unit testing.
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TestNG
TestNG in Selenium is more like a framework than a tool, which supports Selenium, REST Assured, Appium, etc. Testers can generate HTML reports for the tests with their status—passed, failed, or skilled. Later on, they can re-execute the failed test cases.
SoapUI
It is a testing tool used for API testing.
Appium
It is a tool to perform mobile application testing and native app testing.
Benefits of Automation Testing
If you are learning Automation Testing, it is vital for you to know the benefits of learning it. Like every other type of testing, Automation Testing has its pros and cons. Here, you will learn about the 10 advantages of Automation Testing.
Benefits of Automation Testing:
- It proves to be reliable since it is carried out by efficient testing tools.
- 70% faster than manual testing, which saves a lot of time for testers and the organization as a whole.
- Automation Testing avoids human intervention while executing test scripts.
- It allows re-usability and re-running of test cases.
- It increases the speed and efficiency of the software testing process.
- Automation Testing covers all the application features.
- It also allows for the faster delivery of the product into the market.
- Faster feedback systems, which come with Automation Testing, results in an easy communication flow between developers and testers and helps detect and fix bugs earlier.
- It offers improved accuracy as it holds no possibility of human errors.
- It has the capability to run massive amounts of test cases at a time.
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This blog has enriched your knowledge on what Automation Testing is, types of Automation Testing, how it works, its benefits, and so on. With enterprises ready to take advantage of Automation Testing for faster releases of the product, the demand for Automation Testing professionals is on the rise. So, why not take this golden opportunity and get yourself upskilled with Intellipaat’s Automation Testing Courses to land a job of your choice!
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