T.E.E.N.S Blog: 10 regression/functional web testing tools

10 regression/functional web testing tools

Testing tools often saves time and helps cutting testing time as web applications often suffers from bugs, inconsistent behaviors, usability issues, incorrect functionality, security issues and even the believed expectations of the customer. Its imperatively hard to determine bugs and fixes while development phase is in progress, keeping records drafting a bug sheet determining priority and severity will be a pain. Why not use automated test tools to test your web application. Following is a list of 10 web functional/regression testing tools for web applications in terms of Functional and Regression testing.

1.WATIR Watir is a simple open-source library for automating web browsers. It allows you to write tests that are easy to read and easy to maintain. It is optimized for simplicity and flexibility. Watir drives browsers the same way people do. It clicks links, fills in forms, presses buttons. Watir also checks results, such as whether expected text appears on the page. Watir is a Ruby library that works with Internet Explorer on Windows. Watir is currently being ported to support FireFox and Safari.

Features:

Its free open source tool. There are no costs to use the tool.
There’s a very active and growing community behind it.
It uses ruby, a full featured modern scripting language, rather then a proprietary vendorscript.
It is a powerful and easy to use.
Don’t just take our word for it, Read what our users are saying.

2. SELENIUM IDE- It is an integrated development environment for Selenium tests. It is implemented as a Firefox extension, and allows you to record, edit, and debug tests. Selenium IDE includes the entire Selenium Core, allowing you to easily and quickly record and play back tests in the actual environment that they will run. Selenium IDE is not only recording tool: it is a complete IDE. You can choose to use its recording capability, or you may edit your scripts by hand. With autocomplete support and the ability to move commands around quickly, Selenium IDE is the ideal environment for creating Selenium tests no matter what style of tests you prefer.

Features:

Easy record and playback
Intelligent field selection will use IDs, names, or XPath as needed
Autocomplete for all common Selenium commands
Walk through tests
Debug and set breakpoints
Save tests as HTML, Ruby scripts, or any other format
Support for Selenium user-extensions.js file
Option to automatically assert the title of every page

3. Q ENGINE - AdventNet QEngine offers integrated solutions to test and verify the functionality and performance of both web applications and web services.

Features:

QEngine toolbar for remote record/playback
100% web-based test script creation and maintenance
Multi-user record/playback option
One-click access to configured suites and test scripts
Single point of control for functional and performance testing
Web services functional and performance testing
Data-Driven test scripts
Error recovery for unattended testing
Test scheduling for unattended execution
QEngine Issue Manager to track and manage issues

4. MAX Q - It is a Web functional testing tool. It includes an HTTP proxy that records your test script, and a command-line utility that can be used to playback tests. The proxy recorder automatically stores variables posted to forms, so you don’t have to write that stuff by hand.

Features:

Free and open source
Scripts are written in Jython, an implementation of Python. Python scripts are easy to understand, modify and extend.
Alternatively, the captured HTTP sessions may be saved as XML files, according to ISAC format, for (massive) replay with CLIF load testing platform
Works from the command line so you can run scripts unattended.
Understands cookies.
Written in Java so it runs anywhere.
Easy to enhance because the source code is simple.
Scripts can run as JUnit tests.
Works behind proxy servers.

5. Solex- It is a free open source Web application testing tool built as a plug-in for the Eclipse IDE. It provides functions to record a client session, adjust it according to various parameters and replay it later typically in order to ensure non regression of the application’s behavior (with stress testing capabilities being added at a later stage). Solex acts as an HTTP proxy and records all HTTP requests and responses going through the wire between a Web client (e.g. a Web browser) and a Web server. The task of replaying a scenario consists in sending the previously recorded and eventually customized HTTP requests to the server and asserting each response.

Features:
Solex can record HTTP messages by acting as a Web proxy.
Recorded sessions can be saved as XML and reopened later.
HTTP requests and responses are fully displayed in order to inspect and customize their content, thanks to replacement rules.
Solex allows the attachment of extraction or replacement rules to any HTTP message content, HTTP header or URL parameter.
Recorded requests can be filtered to remove or disable unwanted resources, like .jpg, .gif.
Solex allows the attachment of assertions to responses in order to validate a scenario during its playback.
Solex can replay an HTTP session request by request or all requests at once.
Playback results can be exported as XML with an optional XSL transformation

6. SILK TEST - It is an automation tool for testing the functionality of enterprise applications in most versions of Windows, Sun Solaris 9 & 10, and Red Hat Enterprise Linux WS 2.1 & 3.0. It is produced by Segue Software which was acquired by Borland in 2006. SilkTest uses the proprietary 4Test language for automation scripting. It is an object oriented language similar to C++. It uses the concepts of classes, objects, and inheritance.

Features:
contains all the source script files.
translates the script commands into GUI commands (User actions). These commands can be executed on the same machine as the host or on a remote machine.
SilkTest can be run to identify mouse movement along with keystrokes (Useful for custom object). It can use both record and playback or descriptive programming methods to capture the dialogs.
SilkTest identifies all windows and controls of the application under test as objects and defines all of the properties and attributes of each window. Thus it supports object oriented implementatio.

7. QA WIZARD - QA Wizard Pro automates the functional and regression testing of Web and Windows applications, helping your quality assurance team test more of an application in less time.

Features:

Powerful, Easy to Use Scripting Language
Object-based Record and Playback Engine
Global Application Repository
Validation Checkpoints
Data-driven Testing
Seamless Integration with Seapine ALM Tools
Remote Script Execution.

8. WEB KING - The release of WebKing 3.5 makes it easier than ever to verify and improve application reliability throughout the development process. This tool allows developers and QA testers to work together more efficiently by giving them a single tool that spans the entire development life cycle, from content flow and functionality verification to automated testing and deployment of web applications.The new software enables users to run automated testing and analysis of Web applications, addressing four primary areas: Web site risk analysis, functional testing, load and performance testing, and security analysis, the company said. Parasoft officials said WebKing helps to ensure that Web applications meet specific content, performance, reliability and security goals set by users.

Features:

Powerful, Easy to Use Scripting Language
A SOAP Test Wizard automatically creates SOAP test cases from a WSDL
Additional Java, JavaScript, and Python scripting options allow users to customiz.
A Log File Analysis feature produces traffic analysis reports and automatically record.
A SOAP Test Wizard automatically creates SOAP test cases from a WSDL
produce high-quality Web applications and Web services within a short time period.

9. TestDrive - TestDrive-Gold is designed to test just about any GUI or browser application ‘out of the box’. It has in-built technology to deal with a multitude of controls and techniques.TestDrive-Gold is designed to test just about any GUI or browser application ‘out-of-the-box’. It has in-built technology to deal with a multitude of controls and techniques, without you having to worry about them. With some technologies, it is the only solution that works. Just a couple of the highlights are: Code free testing
Selg healing Technology, Innovative script contaol Technology, Iseries server side testingMacros lets you record and replay repetitious work.

Features:

Easily create test scenarios through a simple point-and-click interface.
Execute a complete regression test in hours not days, complete with full results, automatic data rules, and analysis.
Complex decision-linked tests can be built that integrate with the server functions to give a complete approach to testing.
Free of any coding language.
Variable data, Tracked Fields and Action map functionality.
Schedule playback to run anytime day and night.

10.Rational Functional Tester - Provides testers with automated testing capabilities for functional testing, regression testing, GUI testing and data-driven testing.

Features:

Provides testers with automated capabilities for data-driven and keyword testing.
Offers testers a choice of scripting language and industrial-strength editor: Java in Eclipse® or Microsoft® Visual Basic .NET® in Visual Studio .NET - for test authoring and customization.
Supports version control to enable parallel development of test scripts and concurrent usage by geographically distributed teams.
Supports custom controls through proxy SDK (Java/.Net)

There are various other products available in market today but i have compiled the list based on my experiences of various testing tools. Please post your experiences with these tools or you can add new ones which i may have missed. If you like this post kindly subscribe to our RSS for free updates and articles delivered to you.