Test Execution Tools

August 23, 2016

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Need for Test Execution Tools

Most of the software testing experts prefer test execution tools for automation purpose. This term is quite contradictory, because it can also be known by different terms such as test running tools, capture or replay tools. Most commonly, it comes in a category of software testing tools. These tools are initially used for automation of regression tests as it executes test scripts effectively and efficiently in a speedy manner and reduces the test execution time.

Test execution tool requires good knowledge of scripting languages in order to execute test cases and scripts in a right direction, and demands skilled professional/tester, proficient in programming language create and modify test scripts.

Basic Principles of Test Execution Tools

1. Capture: Recording of all sort or manual testing activities and system responses in a test script.
2. Control Points: It is defined as the number of checkpoints added to the scripts by tester at the time of capture.
3. Playback: It is defined as the automatic re-execution of the test script.

Advantages

1. Automation is an effective approach to execute large number of manual tests, especially regression tests which needs to be introduced repeatedly in each cycle of the development models like iterative model.
2. These tools are necessary in the development cycle involving frequent builds and subsequent smoke tests to validate these builds.
3. In automation, test scripts requires the configuration management to keep eye on each different test elements and objects such as test data and test scripts, which provides parallel advantage to automation.

Disadvantages

1. Initial development and maintenance of the test scripts using test execution tools requires large amount of capital.
2. Need considerable amount of attention while introducing changes in requirements, specifications and code(if any) throughout the development so as to maintain the test scripts.
3. These tools requires good knowledge of programming and thus, usage of these tools by the professional/testers imparting lack of programming skills may produce undesirable and inappropriate outcomes.