#digital qa testing

Ensuring the quality of a software application is important to win the customer’s trust and stay ahead of the competition curve. It is the quality attribute in a software that rules out vulnerabilities and provides a seamless user experience. With the complexity of technology platforms and the availability of a plethora of devices, digital testing has become the prerequisite to achieve a host of business objectives as detailed below:

Enables strong end to end integration of modules

Rules out vulnerabilities

Accelerates the time to market

Compliance with regulatory frameworks

Provides a seamless user experience

Be competitive and achieve ROI

In the Agile and DevOps era where continuous improvement and testing are the buzzwords, digital testing involves the use of test automation. This way, the inadequacies of manual testing are eliminated and the product turns out to be robust and bug free. As the demand for test automation grows, professionals offering digital testing services work on various digital QA tools. The choice of such tools depends on the type of digital testing to be performed — regression, cloud testing, API testing, desktop testing, browser testing, and web testing among others.

Importantly, test automation tools are available dime a dozen — both open source and licensed. These should be chosen with care depending on factors like suitability, flexibility, versatility, convenience of usage, and cost. Although, a lot has been said about the relative pros and cons of using open source or licensed tools, it is time to suggest a few.

#1 Selenium

Arguably the most popular and widely used open source test automation tool, it offers a slew of advantages. These range from a rich suite of IDE’s and frameworks, compatibility with browsers, languages and platforms, and a robust reporting mechanism. Its top of the line features like scalability, reusability, multi-threading, record and playback offers digital quality assurance testers the flexibility to write test scripts in any programming language. Thus, there is no need to write scripts for different operating systems but a single one to suit Linux, Firefox, Internet Explorer, Opera, Chrome, Mac, Linux and Safari. Being open source, Selenium can be easily downloaded and is backed by a strong developer community.

URL: http://www.seleniumhq.org/

#2 Cucumber

Supporting a number of programming languages such as Ruby, Java, .NET and Flex, Cucumber is a digital QA tool that tests web applications. The tool allows the use of plain english text to pen down requirements for a close coordination between various stakeholders. These requirements for the customers, management, clients and the development team can be made a part of the test automation script. Cucumber enables a close coordination between teams and helps to run automated scripts in a behaviour driven environment. The best way to identify glitches in Cucumber is to write a behaviour based test script in plain text and then watch it fail. Thereafter, the correct code should be written for validation of the behaviour.

URL: https://cucumber.io/

#3 TestComplete

Developed by SmartBear Software, TestComplete offers functional digital testing services to test desktop, web and mobile applications. Its GUI based automated test environment offers a host of features. These include support for scripting languages such as JavaScript, Python, VBScript, Python, DelphiScript, and C#Script. Also, it contains features like a test visualizer, and recording and playback. It is arguably the best digital QA tool that is suitable for continuous testing and delivery. This is due to the fact that a runtime engine in TestComplete helps create a continuous testing framework for non stop testing even on remote computers. Moreover, it facilitates the integration with top continuous testing tools such as Jenkins and Git.

URL: smartbear.com/product/testcomplete

#4 SoapUI

Capable of running an automated test in a multi test environment, SoapUI is used to conduct functional testing on web applications. Besides, the tool can be used to test internet applications, messaging layers and databases by changing the test set up. Its drag and drop feature makes it easier for testers to write test cases. To facilitate the testing of web services that are yet to be developed, the tool allows the creation of mock web services.

URL: https://www.soapui.org/

#5 LoadStorm

This load testing tool enables the checking of web and mobile applications under heavy user traffic. Its simulating ability to create virtual test cases and users makes it highly scalable. It is used to test the breaking point of an app or website.

URL: loadstorm.com

Conclusion