In this blogpost, we discuss the definition and significance of automated testing of software systems. Moreover, the applications and steps involved in automated testing are also discussed.
What is software testing?
Software testing is a quality assurance activity to ensure that a software system meets all the user requirements or works according to its specification. In addition to the specifications or requirements, the purpose of software testing is to determine if the software system performs its intended functions correctly or not.
Automated testing definition
To understand the notion of automated testing, we first need to know the concept of manual testing. In manual software testing, a certain program or software is tested manually by the human testers to determine the behaviour of the system against a certain set of inputs. The outputs or the system’s behaviour is compared with the expected outputs to decide whether the test has been successful or otherwise.
On the other hand, by automated testing we mean that a certain program or test script is used to ensure if the system works correctly or according to its specification. In contrast to the manual testing, automated testing needs no or little human intervention to complete the testing activity. Since automated testing is aimed at exhaustively testing the software components, therefore, the components are expected to be free of defects that eventually leads to high quality software systems.
Why automated testing?
Most of the times, the software systems are developed in iterations and as a result testing activity has to be performed repeatedly. In such situations, with every iteration the testing activities at unit level or after integration are to be performed. This repeated testing not only is expensive but time consuming and laborious as well. Particularly, for large-scale and complex systems with thousands or tens of lines of code, performing the testing manually and repeatedly is not practical.
Automated Testing Tools for Web Applications
Moreover, during the manual testing, every so often we are not able to achieve our desired results due to the shortcomings of the testing process or the mistakes made by the human testers during the testing. In such situations, automated testing comes into play and to test a software systems, automated tools and test script are used. Therefore, it is much easier to perform the testing of modules or programs that are difficult to perform through the manual testing. For example, when a program has to be tested repeatedly, executing the automated tests is much convenient than the manual testing of the programs. In addition, large applications with hundreds of test cases are tested faster through the automated tools.
Regarding the cost of automated testing, the upfront cost of preparing the test scripts and procuring the testing tools is high. However, this cost is one time instead of the recurring costs that are incurred in case of manual testing. Therefore, as compared to the manual testing, automated testing is less expensive as well.
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Applications of automated testing
Automated testing is effective to test a variety of applications or systems. For example:
- Web applications
- Desktop applications
- Android applications
- APIs
In addition, these days industry is excessively making use of automated testing to efficiently test the critical components.
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Steps in automated testing
In literature you will find a variety of information about the activities or steps to be followed in automated testing. As a matter of fact, all such information is correct as each article is written from a different perspective. Below is a generic sequence of steps performed in automated testing.
- Identify the testing tools
The first and important step in automated testing is the selection of the automated testing tool. There are a variety of tools available; however, the selection of the tool should be made not on the basis of its popularity but because of its ability to fulfil the testing requirements.
- Identify the scenarios to be tested
While going for automated testing it is important to decide which particular parts of the program or modules should be tested automatically. It might not be feasible to test each program module. Therefore, the modules containing critical functionality and requiring significant amount of manual testing effort are good candidates for automated testing.
- Generating the functional specifications
Once the specific components or modules to be tested have been identified, the next step is to generate the specification of the program to be automated. All the usage scenarios to ensure the complete coverage are identified and modelled.
- Writing test scripts
Based on the usage specifications, automated tests are generated with the help of test scripts. This is the core activity that is required to perform the testing. In contrast to the test cases, test scripts offer a more overarching approach to cover all the possibilities related to certain task. Test scripts include the Test Oracles as well that is the inputs to be used for testing and the expected outputs. This information is subsequently used for test evaluation.
- Automated test execution
Once the test scripts are ready, the tests are executed with the help of test runners.
- Test evaluation
After the tests are executed, the next step is test evaluation. Since the Test Oracles contain the expected behaviour of the system, the actual outcomes are compared with the expected ones and hence decisions regarding the success or failure of a test are made.
Automated testing tools
There are several tools that are being used for automated testing. A few popular tools are listed below:
- SELENIUM
- Katalon Studio
- TestComplete
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Automated testing though appears to be a fascinating alternative of the manual testing, however, things are not that straight forward in reality. In contrast to the manual testing, the automated testing requires sufficient programming and analytical skills to model the usage scenarios and develop the test scripts. From a practical viewpoint, the benefits of the automated testing outweigh the process difficulty or complexity to carry this out.
In conclusion, automated testing has emerged as a suitable testing alternative because of its ability to improve the test reliability, enhanced test coverage, and reduced testing efforts. Particularly, for the large-scale, complex, and real-time embedded systems whose consequences of failure are very high, automated testing is the way to go.
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