By Kishore Abid

FUNCTIONAL AUTOMATION TOOL

COMPARISON

IBM – Rational Functional Tester (RFT) is a tool for automated testing of software applications from the Rational Software division of IBM. The test script is produced as either a Java or Visual Basic.net application

IBM – RATIONAL FUNCTIONAL TESTER (RFT)

HP Quick Test Professional (QTP) software provides functional and regression test automation for software applications and environments. Part of the HP Quality Center tool suite, HP Quick Test Professional can be used for enterprise quality assurance. HP-QTP supports keyword and scripting interfaces and features a graphical user interface. It uses the Visual Basic Scripting Edition (VBScript) scripting language to specify a test procedure, and to manipulate the objects and controls of the application under test.

HP QUICK TEST PROFESSIONAL (QTP)

Selenium is an open source tool and moreover it supports a variety of languages that include Java, Python, PHP, C#, Ruby and even pure JavaScript. Selenium is at present the most powerful Open Source Automation tool available and it is based on java scripting to a large extent. It is more suited for the agile methodology of coding and testing.

SELENIUM

Selenium is composed of multiple software tools.

Each has a specific role

Selenium 2 (aka. Selenium WebDriver)This brand new automation tool provides all sorts of awesome features, including a more cohesive and object oriented API as well as an answer to the limitations of the old implementation.

SELENIUM’S TOOL SUITE

Selenium IDE (Integrated Development Environment) is a prototyping tool for building test scripts. It is a Firefox plugin and provides an easy-to-use interface for developing automated tests. Selenium IDE has a recording feature, which records user actions as they are performed and then exports them as a reusable script in one of many programming languages that can be later executed.

SELENIUM IDE

Feature IBM RFT HP QTP

Scripting Languages

Java and C# VB Scripting

Supported Domains/Application

• HTML• Java• AWT• SWT• Eclipse• Dojo

• HTML• Java (Core and Advanced)• .Net• WPF• SAP• Oracle

Browser Support • Internet Explorer• Google Chrome• Mozilla Firefox• Netscape

• Internet Explorer• Google Chrome• Mozilla Firefox• Netscape

Object Repository Management

Very Good Excellent

Playback Method Excellent Excellent

RFT VS QTP

Feature IBM RFT HP QTP

Cost 3 times cheaper than QTP

Very Expensive. Approximately $8000

Record and Playback Option

Available Available

Recording Modes Java Scripting ModeSimplified Mode

Context Sensitive ModeLow Level ModeAnalog Mode

Debugging Options Very Good Excellent

IDE RFT Eclipse IDE QTP IDE

Descriptive Programming

Available Available

Regular Expressions

Available Available

CONTD..

Feature IBM RFT HP QTP(UFT)

Framework Support Data Driven, Keyword Driven and Modularity

Data Driven, Keyword Driven, Modularity and Library Architecture

Command Line Execution

Supports Command Line Execution

Supports Command Line Execution

Default Data Provider

RFT Datapool QTP Data Table

Third Party Tool support(Selenium and SeeTest Tools)

Selenium and SeeTest Tools can be integrated with IBM RFT

QTP/UFT supports third party tool extensions but not selenium

CONTD..

Feature QTP(UFT) Selenium

Language Support VB Script Java, C#, Ruby, Python, Perl PHP , Javascript

Windows (Non-browser) based Application support

Yes No

Browser support Google Chrome (uptill ver 23) Internet Explorer , Firefox ( ver 21)

Google Chrome , Internet Explorer , Firefox , Opera , HtmlUnit

Environment Support Only Windows Windows , Linux , Solaris OS X , Others (If brower & JVM or Javascript support exists)

Mobile (Phones & Tablets) support

Different commercial product i.e. HP UFT Mobile (formerly known as MobileCloud for QTP)

Android , iPhone & iPad , Blackberry , Headless WebKit

QTP VS SELENIUM

Feature QTP(UFT) Selenium

Framework Easily integrated with HP Quality Center or HP ALM (separate commercial products)

Selenium + Eclipse + Maven / ANT + Jenkins / Hudson & its plugins / Cruise Control + TestNG + SVN

Continuous Integration

Possible through Quality Center / ALM or Jenkins

Possible through Jenkins / Hudson / Cruise Control

Object Recognition / Storage

Inbuilt Object Repository (storing Element Id, multiple attributes) along with weightage that gives flexibility on deviation acceptance in control recognition

UI Maps and different object location strategy such as -XPath Element ID or attribute DOM

Image based Tests Easily possible Possible but not easy

CONTD..

Reports Quality Center has in-built awesome dashboards

Integration with Jenkins can give good reporting & dashboard capabilities

Software Cost License & Annual maintenance fees

Zero

Coding Experience of Engineer

Not Much Should be very good along with technical capabilities of integrating different pieces of framework

Script Creation Time Less High

Hardware resource (CPU + RAM) consumption during script execution

High Low

Product Support Dedicate HP support along with support forums

Open Source Community

CONTD..

Selenium supports many languages such as Java, C#, ruby, python. It doesn’t support windows based application but is one of the best

tools for web-based automation and supports all browsers such as IE, FF, Chrome, Safari etc.

Being into open source world, Selenium can integrate with just about anything to give you a robust framework such as Maven or Ant for source code compilation, Test NG to drive tests (unit or functional or integration), Jenkins or Hudson or Cruise Control to integrate into a Continuous Integration and diff erent reports or dashboards out of Jenkins.

Selenium also helps you enter bugs or issues into JIRA (Bug management tool) through Jenkins. With the help of Jenkins or Grid, testers can connect multiple nodes to run diff erent tests in parallel.

Cost is the biggest advantage as it is a freeware and is integrated with other open source tools. As mentioned above, the only cost that you need to spend is on the human resource (single or team) who knows all of the above stuff

ADVANTAGES

I think since we are using Java as the front end the most compactible tool will be RFT

RFT will also cost less than UFT which is more than 3 times as costly than RFT

Selenium is open source and used for broswer compatibility testing

Selenium can be integrated with RFT , hence it makes sense to implement RFT in our project

CONCLUSION