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117 | International Journal of Computer Systems, ISSN-(2394-1065), Vol. 03, Issue 02, February, 2016

International Journal of Computer Systems (ISSN: 2394-1065), Volume 03 – Issue 02, February, 2016

Available at http://www.ijcsonline.com/

Comparative Study of Automated Testing Tools: Selenium and Quick Test

Professional

R. Bhavithra, G. Lavanya, D. Thiruveni

Department of Information Technology,Vivekanandha College of Engineering for Women (Autonomous),Tamilnadu, India.

Abstract

Software testing helps in finalizing the software application or product against business and user requirements. Testers

play an important role in producing the high quality software product.It is the process of validating and verifying the

software program. Testing automation tools helps us to automate the entire process of testing in software

development.There are variety of software testing automation tools available.From which QTP supports the largest

range of technology in the industry whereas selenium is one of the few free tool on the market that appears to have

functionality that one would expect in a vendor tool. The objective of this paper is to conduct a comparative study of

automated tools which are Selenium free source and Quick test professional (QTP).

Keywords: Selenium web driver, QTP, Object repository.

I. I NTRODUCTION

Generally, while automating web application using any

automation tool, it would be an open source like selenium

web driver or commercial like UFT/QTP. It is quite

straight forward to identify locators for static elements.

But in some applications, it is quite challenge to identify

locators for dynamic elements. In this paper our

comparative study is about QTP and Selenium. Both QTP

and Selenium can handle dynamic objects but with some

restrictions and modifications.

Quick Test Professional (QTP) was originallydeveloped by Mercury interactive.Initially their legacy

testing solution winrunner is having some limitations.

Later Mercury team thought to develop a similar tool like

win runner with Microsoft named quick test professional

aka QTP. It is basically functional testing tool where we

can test functionality of any application under test(AUT).

It helps testing teams to automate manual test cases and

execute regression tests automatically. The main drawback

of QTP is it cannot run multiple threads. But the factor of

grid support available in selenium, where we can run

multiple instances of the application on different browsers

at the same time[5].

After that selenium was originally developed by Jason

Huggins in 2004 as an internal tool at Thought Works.

Paul Hanmant joined the team and steered thedevelopment of the second mode of operation that would

later become selenium Remote control(RC).This tool was

open sourced that year. Selenium is a portable software

testing framework for web applications. It provides a

record playback tool for authorizing tests without learning

a test scripting language (selenese) to write a test in anumber of languages include java, c++, python and ruby.

Selenium web driver is the successor of selenium

remote control which has been deprecated. This is

implemented through a browser specific browser driver,

which sends command to a browser and retrieves

results[4].

II. PROCESS OF HANDLING DYNAMIC OBJECTS

A.QTP:

In this paper we have to handle the dynamic objects in

QTP using the following methods

(i) GetRo:

To capture the value of a dynamic object in a web

application GetRo method is executed. In order to capturethe value of an object and that too of a dynamic object

then we will use this property which means Get Run time

object property. A sample code for gmail to count unread

emails from any account is given below.The prerequisite isthat you have to login to your gmail account and then run

this script

Inboxcount=Browser(“title:Gmail.*”).Page(“title:

Gmail.*”).Link(“innertext:Inbox.*).getRopr operty(“innert

ext”)

If inboxcount =”Inbox” Then

Print “No Unread Emails”

Exit action

Else

//replaces inbox with space

emailcount = replace(inboxcount,“Inbox”,”)

//removes all the spacesemailcount= trim(emailcount)

emailcount=replace(emailcount, “)”,”)

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R. Bhavithra et al Comparative Study of Automated Testing Tools: Selenium and Quick Test Professional


emailcount=replace(emailcount, “)”,”)

Print ”you have “ &emailcount& “unread emails in your

inbox”

End If.

B.SELENIUM:

(i).Absolute Xpath:

Xpath position or absolute Xpath are most frequently

used to resolve the dynamic element issues. Only problem

with using Xpath locators is that they are very fragile.

They are most prone to breakage in case of change in web page. This factor could get worse exponentially as the test

suite size and completely increases. An example is:

web_element_name=html/body/div[30]/div[2]/div[2]

(ii).Identify element by starting text:

If the dynamic elements have a definite pattern tothem, then we can also use javascript functions like ”starts

with” or “contains” in one element locators to separate the

dynamic part of locator from static part. So we can starts

with function here.

Xpath://button[starts-with(@id, „Submit-„)]

(iii).Identify element by containing text:

Here we can use „contains‟ function where dynamic

element is surrounded by a static value.

Xpath://input[contains(@class,‟suggest‟)]

(iv).Identify element by index:

If there are multiple elements present on the page with

same locator we can use java code in our selenium web

driver script to interact with element of particularindex.driver.findElement(By.xpath(“//submit”).get((page

number).

(v).Identify element with reference of a closest stable

element:We can use the DOM structure to find the closest

stable element which can be used as a reference element to

find the required element.

XPATH://span 1/../following – sibling:div//button

(vi).Identify element by stable preceding text:For web elements like text field text area we can

identify them by using the stable text lables nearby. This

approach might not be possible in all scenarios but it does

resolve the dynamic element issues where possible.

III. PRINCIPLES AND COMPONENTS

A. QTP

(i).Components of QTP in linear framework:

Here each test case has its own local object

repository and the data is hard-coded in the script. Linear

Framework is the framework where you write the scripts

in a step by step manner as depicted in the test case flow.

In this type of framework, we don‟t create any functions

and all the steps are written one after the other in a linear

fashion.Following diagram illustrates the components and the

typical workflow of the Linear Framework in QTP.

Figure 1: Components and typical workflow of the linear

framework in QTP.

(ii).Components and Workflow of Modular Framework:

In order to use the functions from the external library

file, the library file must be first associated to the test

cases. Once this is done, the test case can call all the

functions present in the library file.

Figure 2:Components and work flow of modular

framework in QTP.

Modular Framework is the approach where all the test

cases are first analyzed to find out the reusable flows.

Then while scripting, all these reusable flows are created

as functions and stored in external files and called in the

test scripts wherever required. Consider the following 2test cases.

a) Login > Create Order > Logout.

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b) Login > Search Order > Logout

In order to use the functions from the external library

file, the library file must be first associated to the test

cases. Once this is done, the test case can call all the

functions present in the library file.

Figure 3:Components and workflow of modular

framework in QTP.

B.SELENIUM:

Selenium is a portable software testing framework for

web application. It provides a record/playback tool for

authoring test without learning a test scripting language

(selenium IDE).It also provides a test domain specific

language(selenese) to write tests in a number of popular

programming languages including java, python and

ruby[3].

The components of selenium testing tools are

(i).Selenium IDE:Selenium IDE is the integrated development

environment for building selenium test cases .It operates

as a firefox add -on.

(ii).Selenium RC:

Selenium RC is a test tool that allows us to write

automated web application. It tests in any programminglanguage.

(iii).Selenium Grid:

Selenium Grid is a server that allows test tool web

browser instances running on remote machines.

(iv).Selenium Web Driver:

Selenium Web Driver makes direct calls to the browser

using each browsers native support for automation. Web

driver is a tool for automating web application testing, and

in particular to verify that they work as expected.Once our project is setup, we can see that web driver

acts as just as any normal library:it is entirely self-contained ,and we usually don‟t need to remember to startany additional processes or run any installers before using

it, as opposed to the proxy server with Selenium-RC.

IV. COMPARATIVE STUDY

Table 1: Differences between selenium and QTP[2].

SELENIUM QTP

Open source Paid tool

Works on all OS Works on windows.

Tests only web

applications.

Tests desktop and web

applications.

Works on almost all

browsers.

Works on firefox3.5.x nad

IE.

No object repository. Has got an objectrepository.

Core engine is javascript. Core engine is not a

javascript.

V. CONCLUSION

There is difference between buying a branded car andassembling a car on your own. Branded car has its cost &

services attached whereas in assembled car, you need to

take care of everything on your own. But, there is a hybrid

solution where you can go to a custom workshop to get an

assembled car (sales and post-sales support) and pay for

their services. The same concept is now available in IT too

such as you go to a service provider who has everything.

One can select a testing tool based on the type of

application need to be tested, budget, and the efficiency

required.Both these tools are at the same level, the

difference is that QTP is mostly suitable for the desktop based application whereas selenium is an excellent tool forweb-based applications.

R EFERENCES

[1] Principle and components of Selenium.http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/principles.

[2] QTP V/S Selenium, qtp-sel.blogspot.in/?m=1.

[3] Seleniumwebdriverhttp://www.seleniumhq.org/doc/03_webdriver.jsp

[4] selenium Introduction and its componentshttp://tfortesting.wordpress.com/2012/10/25/selenium-introduction-

and-its-components/[5] QTP Introduction.www.tutorialspoint.com/qtp/qtp_overview.html.

[6] Harpeet Kaur et al, “Comparative study of automated testing toolsQTP Selenium and TC”, Int. Journal of Engineering Research and

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[7] Innovative approaches of automated tools in software testing andcurrent technology as compared to manual testing Global journal ofenterprise of information system, an 2009-jan 2009.

[8] Sneha Khoria and Pragati Up adhyay,Performance Evaluation andComparison of Software Testing Tools VSRD International

Journal of Computer Science Information Technology, Vol. 2 No.10 & October 2012.

[9] Software Test Automation - http ://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Testautomation

[10] Mohd. Ehmer Khan, “Different Forms of SoftwareTestingTechniques for Finding Errors,”IJCSI” International Journalof Computer Science Issues, Vol. 7, Issue 3, No 1, May 2010.

[11] Jovanovich and Irena, “Software Testing Methods andTechniques,” May 26, 2008.

[12] Quick Test Professional entry in Wikipedia: Http://en.wikipedia.org. /wiki/HP_ Quick Test_ Professional.

[13] Mercury Quick Test Professional tutorial, version 8.0.MercuryInteractive Corp oration, Documentation, 2004.

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