5 of the most popular functional testing tools in 2018

Today, software testing plays a key role in the process of creating and maintaining a top quality IT product in high demand. Not surprisingly, tools that help automate part of the testing process have gained immense popularity among QA engineers and some have, frankly speaking, a whole army of fans. Today we will be discussing some of them. We will provide a brief description and try to single out the advantages and disadvantages of the most popular tools for functional testing.

Selenium

Advantages:

• Free
• Supports all major programming languages for scripts
• Cross-platform

Downsides:

• Testing is limited to web applications.
• Advanced programming skills required
• Limited functionality compared to paid alternatives

Selenium is a real old-timer among all functional testing tools. Its history started in 2004 and now it is considered to be the most popular tool in this segment. Despite the widespread use of Selenium by such giants as Google, it still has a number of drawbacks. Perhaps the principal one is the need to possess advanced programming and scripting skills to be able to work successfully with the product, which in turn often makes it difficult for beginner testers to master the tool. But Selenium is distributed absolutely free of charge, it supports a huge number of languages for creating scripts and is also a cross-platform tool; it is impossible not to love it.

Katalon Studio

Advantages:

• Simplified script creation
• Free
• CI support

Downsides:

• Supports a small number of programming languages
• Lack of detailed reports
• There is no possibility to simultaneously run multiple tests.

Katalon Studio is another very popular tool for automating the testing process. Like Selenium, it is an absolutely free, cross-platform product, however, its target audience are precisely beginner QA engineers. To aid them, the set of features of Katalon Studio provide functions such as simplified scripting and testing using keywords, which in theory should greatly facilitate automation for beginners.

But this tool is not without flaws, among them is a poor choice of programming languages, as well as a lack of detailed reports.

In any case, Katalon Studio is a tool worth mentioning and will undoubtedly continue to be in demand in professional circles for many years to come.

UFT

Advantages:

• Wide range of applications that can be tested
• Simplified script creation
• Interface update with minimal script changes

Downsides:

• Monoplatform
• Monolingual
• Paid

UFT is a commercial product for functional testing developed by Micro Focus. Its undisputed advantage is the existence of a number of functionalities that make testing easier and more effective. For example, UFT includes a rare interface update function with minimal script changes, which saves QA engineers working time in the event of a UI change. Also, this tool can be used for testing a wide range of applications and is compatible with web, desktop, and mobile applications. However, this tool operates only under Windows OS and you can use only VBScript to write scripts.

IBM Rational Functional Tester

Advantages:

• Wide range of applications that can be tested
• Cross-platform
• Function of recording and visualization of all user actions

Downsides:

• The need to integrate into IBM environment to access all features of the product
• A small set of supported programming languages as compared to Selenium
• IBM RFT is a paid functional testing tool from IBM.

In terms of scope of the useful functionality, it is not inferior to UFT. For example, the key feature, IBM RFT, is Storyboard testing, which allows you to record and visualize all user activity related to automated testing. The detailed beautiful test reports are another big plus of this product. Two scripting languages are supported: Visual Basic.Net and Java, which significantly expands the range of users compared to UFT. Moreover, this tool is cross-platform and will work equally well on Windows, Linux or OS X.

RFT seamlessly integrates with other IBM products, for example, IBM Jazz, an application lifecycle management system, which allows you to further improve your final product.

TestComplete

Advantages:

• Supports a large number of programming languages
• Wide range of applications that can be tested
• GU Object Recognition Function

Downsides:

• Monoplatform
• No option for simplified script creation

SmartBear TestComplete is an effective tool for testing desktop, mobile and web applications. The product is distributed on a commercial basis.

Its main drawback is that it is monoplatform and can only operate under Windows OS. But this tool is one of the few that can compete with Selenium in terms of the number of supported programming languages.

Test cases can be created with JavaScript, Python, VBScript, JScript, Delphi, C ++ and C #.
TestComplete has a GUI object recognition function similar to UTF, with which it is possible to automatically detect and update user interface objects. This will significantly reduce the cost of maintaining test scripts when the interface changes.

Conclusion

Of course, the above description of testing tools is not exhaustive. And it is impossible to determine with accuracy which tool is best for you. That is why we have prepared a detailed table to match these and other functional testing tools on their key features comparison table on ROI4CIO