What is The Future Of Automated Testing.

Not surprisingly, during the past 12 months many organisations were trying to reduce price ranges and stream line his or her's testing projects. Tom Millichamp, Training Director of Edgewords, an organisation that specialises in providing training courses for automated testing instruments, explains that he is asked many times recently about the open source testing tools that are available to use, but he questions whether these tools do offer a credible alternative to the current market leading proprietary equipment.

There are certainly quite a few open source tools accessible, some of which appear to be reasonably well supported; but if you are a tester considering making the proceed to open source tools, make sure you carefully consider the advantages as well as disadvantages first.



The first obvious advantage stands out as the cost; the initial investment will be much lower than the propriety same in principle. Secondly, the source code is simply reachable, and organisations can as well develop and customise some of the products to meet most of the individual specifications.

However, there are some major disadvantages to applying open source products. 揃efore making the move to open source testing gear, it is important this testers fully consider over time implications? explained Tom Millichamp. Sometimes what appears to be more cost effective may actually end up costing any organisation substantially, in recovery time, product faults, or having to restart a project with another software program.

Before opting for a open source tool it is also important to check whether it comes with full documentation and assistance. 揟he type of documentation you need to look for, includes, on-line help systems, user guides and installation instructions. Users should also check in advance the fact that tools provide sufficient assistance? explained Tom Millichamp. 揗ake sure you know where you can go when things don抰 perform properly, and where you will be able find skilled contractor and also consultancy support for most of these tools.? Many open source instruments are well supported by the community that developed your pet; however, be aware there is no contract between the user and this also community, so it is important to consider where you are going to go for help should the community stops developing or supporting the solution.

Many of the available source functional automated testing tools were designed for specific environments, such as Web. Although the tools may perhaps be useful if that is the only type of applications to be tested, if you have to examine applications developed in many different different environments, the usefulness of the tool becomes greatly restrained. In comparison, most of the market leading proprietary tools just like HP抯 QuickTest Professional or simply IBM抯 Rational Robot, support multiple environments including World-wide-web, Java,. NET, Standard Windows xp, and Terminal-Based applications. This offers a great advantage of only having to learn the tool as soon as, yet having the ability to test the full variety of different applications. It also affords the opportunity to develop whole end-to-end automated tests occupying several systems.

As a competent trainer, Tom Millichamp is concerned that there is not adequate, high quality training readily available the open source equipment. 揗any of the robotic testing tools are complicated to apply; they have programming languages to sit and learn, and should be set up and deployed using established industry guidelines. To get the greatest results from test automation it is important to fully understand the product and also its particular capabilities, therefore good level of quality, comprehensive training is extremely important.? This is an vicinity where proprietary tools are certainly established, with professional training courses available to support your pet.

It is also crucial to consider that a number of the vendors of the proprietary tools are rapidly putting new and exciting functionality recommended to their products, to enable them to compete against the growing volume of open source and reduced vendor offerings. According to Tom Millichamp, this can only be a good thing.

Many of the proprietary tools offer extra functionality than their clear source peers, but, Tom Millichamp would welcome quite a few in-depth, side-by-side evaluations for open source versus proprietary tools.

So will 2011 see a continued growth and involvement with open source testing applications? That really is up to you, as the testers in the industry, but after considering the advantages and disadvantages, we expect that as the economy continues to heal, the interest and investment will bring back to the more main-stream products and services. Tom Millichamp suggests that resources may very well be better utilised in up-skilling testers on the new features of the latest proprietary software through teaching; enabling them to make the most of their established and totally supported tools.

About the writer

Tom Millichamp is a director of Edgewords, a company that specialises in furnishing expert training to evaluating professionals. Tom抯 testing career has spanned over a decade, he is known within the testing industry for an expert in software automation. He began his career working as a Test Manager, and then became a Test Automation Consultant when he helped set up a leading test consultancy for 1999. In 2003 Jeff founded Edgewords, and has since dedicated his a chance to training other testing individuals.

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