There is a lot of demand for rigorous testing with the consistent developments in software, the growing competition and complicated apps. The success of a product is directly linked to when exactly it was launched. In case the errors aren’t properly checked and the launch is done in an extreme rush, you might make mistakes that can affect your reputation as a software service provider in a negative light.

All high-level apps must be delivered at the right time and within the defined resource limit. The final desire to deliver a lot more in less time has brought about a lot of challenges for the assurance of software quality. The importance of handling software quality is fulfilled with the help of functional testing. The greater the complexity, the more the demand for functional testing. It is also related to innumerable challenges and dangerous risk factors. This is nothing to worry about, as with the help of the best strategies and by adapting the best practices, these problems can be overcome. Unlike non-functional testing, Functional testing begins with monitoring and checking the final product for bugs or problems.

 Below, we have mentioned a few challenges related to functional testing and quality assurance:

Gathering of the requirements:

The test requirements must be clearly defined and capable of adjusting to the changes. Collecting the requirements and bringing them in one place is a major criteria. Try to bring all the requirements in one place before moving somewhere else. More than 50% of the defects get injected in the requirements phase. It forms the base for the future work of the product. If these are not correct, there will be issues for the later stages.

Planning the Test

This one is a highly essential step. Functional gaps in the test plans should be recognized at the right time. Big test plans are checked to understand the problems experienced by the dev team.

Strategy for Testing

Tests are to be delivered within a limited timeline and with the best utilization of proper resources. You must be able to cover all the different test configurations in the best possible way.

Implementation of Test 

Plenty of struggle is there to overcome the mismatch between the required functionality and the plans for the test. There might be specific blocking issues in various functional areas and for re-planning the first plan. Some other challenges in software QA test execution are the total time taken to solve the reappearing issues and fix the test requirement.

Defect Management 

The challenges in defect management include specific ambiguous and incomplete reporting and inconsistency in the report. The bugs might need to be adequately defined for reports and there can be operational errors that highlight the defect. Inefficient tracking influences the complete product functionality.

Reporting Results

Test results need reports that must be easy to understand for the related team members. These reports are in full detail and make the entire process easy. Take help from your entire team to get this done on time. A QA report ok is a doc that captures QA productivity metrics and the performance data. It also translates valuable QA insights into actionable next steps for your business.

Collecting Test Metrics

In the test metrics collection mechanism, you need to check the effectiveness and recognize the areas of improvement.

The more the complexity of software apps and their growing competitiveness, the more the requirement for efficient and exhaustive testing. The most crucial criterion for the success of a product is to launch the perfect product at the perfect time. High-quality apps need to be developed and delivered within the specific schedule using some resources. The need to deliver more with less has brought about an infinite number of challenges in handling the software app quality with the help of functional testing.

The Biggest Challenges of Functional Testing

The functional testing life cycle is limited and comes with challenges and tech restrictions. This is different from non-functional testing. It ends up in creating strategies and best practices to overcome the challenges. Functional testing begins with the collection of the test requirements and covers the design and development tests, implementing the tests into further checking the defects in the product.

Let’s look at the challenges linked to every phase in software functional testing.

Collecting the test requirements:

• Properly defining the complete test requirements.
• Handling and planning the tests.
• Difficulty experienced by the dev team while reviewing the big test plans.
• Properly making use of the available resources.
• Complete test coverage.
• Include different types of test configurations
• Deliver within a fixed deadline 

Executing Tests:

• – A lot of trouble was caused by a mismatch between the test plans and needed functionality.
• The total time required for fixing the test environment and the proper set of supported configurations.
• Time consumed in fixing repetitive issues.
• Blocking the functional area issues.
• Re-planning the very first plan.

Handling the defects:

• Improper reporting of the defects.
• Inconsistency in the report for the same problem by various team members.
• Low severity or priority assignments for the reports.
• Operator errors bring about marking the defect as a wrong defect.
• The wrong procedure was applied for the verification of a defect.
• Wrong tracking of a defect that influences the complete functionality of the software product.

Test Result Reporting:

• Short reports are needed for test results that must be easily understood by every person linked to the project.
• Must provide a full status report feature-wise.
• The report must simplify the decision-making for the product.

Gathering Test Metrics, Analysis & Improvement:

• The whole mechanism needs to check the quality and effectiveness of the testing process and recognize the areas of improvement in detail.

Find out How Functional Test Automation Boosts Your Business ROI?

Concluding Lines

Most software testing companies in India state that It’s impossible to test a product thoroughly. The test coverage for any product is based on the resting capacity of the deployed team. The software complexities make the test requirement crucial. These need lots of hardware and software configurations. The configuration coverage is challenging.

Most importantly, it must be taken into account that the time and resources in hand are limited. After consideration of all these facts, proper test management should be designed. For more help and support with functional testing, get in touch with the efficient team at hikeQA.

The post Common challenges with functional testing and how to overcome them? appeared first on hikeqa.

Postman

Postman is one of the most popular API testing tools available today. This Chrome extension makes it easy to build, test and document your APIs. It also allows you to share them with team members or even the public if needed. Some of Postman’s main features include:

• Collection runner – allows you to run all the collections in your directory.
• Time travelling – allows you to record your API activity and then go back to any point during that session. You can even share these recorded test sessions with team members or the public, which is perfect for QA teams spread out worldwide.
• Collections of collections – once you have a lot of collections, it can be hard to keep track of which one needs to be run and when. Postman takes care of this by allowing you to create collections of collections.

SoapUI Pro

SoapUI Pro is a great API testing tool for those looking to test both SOAP and REST APIs. One nice thing about SoapUI Pro is that it can generate load tests and put them into an HTML report, making it easy for you to create your reports. Some of its main features include:

• REST API functional testing – SoapUI Pro allows users to test the most important aspects of REST APIs, including URL paths, parameters and HTTP response codes.
• API simulation testing – SoapUI Pro can generate tests by combining multiple requests and assertions, which is great for running automated tests.
• RESTful web services functional testing automation – with the RESTful APIs constantly taking over as the norm for application integration, it’s important that your teams can efficiently test them. With SoapUI Pro, you can create automated test scripts and run them in a Big Data-ready Docker container.

Fiddler

Fiddler is one of the most popular HTTP debugging tools used today. It’s great for software testing web service APIs exposed through HTTP and HTTPS protocols. Some of its main features include:

• Log incoming and outgoing traffic – Fiddler allows you to record and watch all HTTP traffic between your computer and the Internet.
• Analyze network packets – Fiddler makes it easy for you to see headers, cookies, POST payloads and other useful information about every request and response. These features make it possible for teams to debug their APIs, test server responses or validate their integration points.

WireMock

WireMock is a lightweight tool designed to make stubbing easier. It allows you to quickly generate fake responses that can be used in place of inaccessible endpoints during the early stages of your testing process. Some of its main features include:

• An easy-to-use user interface -allows you to run requests right from your browser.
• Create dynamic mocks – make it possible for WireMock to generate responses by using C# expressions dynamically.

HTTP Master

HTTP Master is a powerful API testing tool that makes it easy for QA teams working on large-scale applications to test APIs created with the .NET framework. Some of its main features include:

• Intelligent request builder – allows you to quickly and accurately create complex requests that can be used for testing APIs, HTTP servers or web services.
• Performance analysis – HTTP Master will generate performance reports that let users see how long each test took to run and which tests need to be optimized for better results.

Runscope

Runscope is another popular tool used by QA teams when testing APIs. It allows you to quickly test RESTful APIs in the cloud, making it perfect for teams that need to run tests with minimal setup or maintenance. Some of its main features include:

• Open source REST API proxy – works directly with applications deployed in the cloud, making it ideal for QA teams with limited resources.
• All-inclusive API testing and monitoring – Runscope provides users with the ability to monitor the performance of their APIs, generate test scripts, validate webhooks and capture detailed analytics reports. Once you start using Runscope, you’ll wonder how you ever did without it.

API Fortress

API Fortress is another API testing tool that makes it easy for teams to test APIs created with the .NET framework. It has a similar approach to Runscope, which means you can easily capture data from web services and then use this data to generate test cases through an intuitive user interface automatically. Some of its main features include:

• Test web APIs – build tests capable of simulating all types of API requests, which means you can use them to perform unit testing.
• Easy-to-use interface – the user interface is designed to let you add actions and then link them together into a logical test flow. This helps even non-technical team members to create and run tests against their APIs quickly.

Final Thoughts

These seven tools can help you to improve the quality of your API testing process. They make it possible for QA teams to easily create test scripts, automate their tests and generate detailed analytics reports. Furthermore, they each offer a unique feature set designed to make testing APIs a little easier.

The post Top 7 API testing tools used in software testing company appeared first on hikeqa.

What is Selenium?

Selenium is a web application testing framework. It supports functional testing of web applications and supports many popular programming languages, including Java, JavaScript, Ruby, etc. Automates browsers like Firefox, Internet Explorer, Opera, Chrome and Remote Control tools such as VNC. It has various capabilities that can also be extended further by integrating custom java code. Selenium is open-source software released under the Apache 2.0 License.

What is Selenium WebDriver?

Selenium WebDriver is a tool that automates browsers. It allows you to execute your tests against different browsers in parallel. It also allows you to automatically fill in login credentials and other data required for testing web applications. Other capabilities include taking screenshots, simulating mouse clicks and key presses, etc.

How Selenium WebDriver Works:

Selenium WebDriver works by communicating with the browser drivers installed on the system. The browser drivers communicate with the browsers, sending commands and receiving feedback. This communication is done through HTTP, and Selenium WebDriver provides an API to use this protocol.

Why use Selenium for Functional Testing?

Selenium has several advantages that make it an attractive choice for functional testing:

1. Free and open-source tool-Since it is open source and free, the cost of proprietary testing tools an be saved.
2. Multiple browser support – It supports various browsers like IE, Firefox, Opera, etc. No more worrying about variable browser settings – Selenium eliminates this headache by allowing you to write test scripts that can run on different browsers without any changes.
3. Support for mobile browsers – Selenium supports testing of mobile browsers using the AndroidDriver and IOSDriver.
4. API support in many popular programming languages– Selenium provides an API in Java, JavaScript, Ruby, Python, etc. This allows for easy scripting of tests without having to learn a new language.
5. Cross-browser compatibility– Tests written in Selenium are compatible across different browsers.

Types of tests that can be performed with Selenium.

Selenium can be used for a variety of types of tests:

• Regression testing- Used to ensure that changes made to the application do not adversely affect existing functionality.
• Smoke testing- A preliminary test used to identify significant problems with an application.
• End-to-end testing- Tests the entire flow of an application, from start to finish.
• Functional testing- Verifies that the application functions according to requirements.
• Compatibility testing- Ensures that an application works with different browsers and operating systems.
• Test-driven development (TDD) – This methodology involves writing test cases before writing actual code. Once the test cases pass, the associated code is complete and can be refactored if needed.

Different ways to run a test on an application with Selenium WebDriver.

Selenium WebDriver can be used in three different ways to test an application:

1. Through a browser- Selenium can connect directly to a browser and interact with it just like a user would.
2. Remotely – Selenium connects to a remote machine that runs the browser and executes tests on it. This technique is beneficial for testing mobile browsers, where installing drivers locally is difficult.
3. In aGrid- Selenium can be used in a grid to execute tests in parallel on multiple machines, and this is useful for testing web applications that are distributed across various servers.

Selenium Grid

Selenium Grid is a tool that allows you to run Selenium tests in parallel on multiple machines. This can be useful when you have a large number of tests to run and want to save time. Selenium Grid also allows you to run tests on different browsers and operating systems. To use Selenium Grid, you first need to install Selenium Server. You can then create a grid using the Selenium Server and add machines to it. The machines in the grid can be either local or remote.

Once you have created a grid, you can run your tests on it. To do this, you need toinstall the necessary drivers on your machine and then run a proxy server. The test scripts will communicate with the proxy servers, which in turn will communicate with the correct machines in the grid.

Final thoughts

Selenium WebDriver is a fantastic tool that allows you to conduct automated functional testing for web applications. Nowadays, more and more people are using Selenium due to its cross-platform compatibility, feature richness, open-source nature etc. Few of them even prefer it for integration testing along with Jenkins. Hope this blog helped you

The post Power of Selenium in Functional Testing appeared first on hikeqa.

In the following article, we will review black-box testing in 2022, its advantages and disadvantages. We’ll also show some examples of how it can be performed using open source tools such as Selenium WebDriver and JMeter. We’ll also review some software testing tools that may become a part of every testers arsenal in 2022.

When did black box testing become popular?

Black box testing is one of the oldest software testing techniques. It has been around since the mid-1950s. Unlike white box testing, it’s based on requirements and functionality only without considering internal program logic (it can be compared to integration testing). This makes it impossible for testers to know what to test (which can be advantageous in some cases, for example, when testers are afraid of breaking the system).

Black box testing is based on specifying coverage criteria. These criteria allow you to determine which parts of the code were executed during black-box testing and which weren’t. It’s especially useful when there is no access to source code (e.g., commercial software or an internal corporate application).

Advantages of black-box testing:

It doesn’t require implementation knowledge (thus, it makes the testing process easier). It can be performed by testers and developers alike (all required skills are programming experiences and basic knowledge about the product). Black box testing is usually less time consuming when compared to white box testing.

Disadvantages of black-box testing:

No access to source code can limit what can be tested, making it less thorough. Furthermore, black box testing is only effective when there are no logical dependencies between input and output data. This limits its usage even further (e.g. if you can not provide the expected data as an input).

What’s new in black box testing?

Currently, there are two major types of automated black-box testing techniques: record and playback (the most popular one) and keyword-driven. Both can be used to automate functional regression tests and smoke tests. Thanks to the wide range of open-source tools that support automation, it’s easier to perform black-box testing.

Tools used to implement black-box testing

1. UFT (HP QuickTest Professional) – seems like the most popular tool designed for automated regression, smoke and functional testing. It’s widely used by many big companies like Microsoft, IBM, Apple…Problems with UI generating capabilities make it difficult to use on GUI-rich browser-based applications.
2. Selenium WebDriver – designed as a language-independent automated black-box testing tool. It’s the most popular open-source solution for web application functional and regression testing (can also be used as a record and playback tool).
3. Watir – Ruby library lets you automate and test web applications using the Watir API to take screenshots and control the mouse. It’s often used for testing browser-based software (such as web-based email, online games or CMS).
4. Apache JMeter is an open-source tool designed to test functional behaviour and measure performance. It can effectively determine how a system performs under a heavy load. It’s a great tool for black-box functional testing, but it should be noted that JMeter cannot check if the application is working correctly.
5. TestComplete – commercial Windows-based test automation solution fromSmartBear Software that supports automated black-box testing on desktop applications and software, including mobile apps(Android and iOS) and web-based software (including JavaScript). It’s designed for both functional and regression testing.
6. Ranorex Studio is a commercial automated black-box solution for testing desktop, mobile and web applications on Windows OS. It supports various technologies like UFT, TestComplete, Selenium WebDriver, Watir, etc.
7. SilkTest is a commercial automated black-box solution for testing web applications on Windows, Linux or Solaris platforms. Supports automation through Selenium WebDriver and supports UI generating tools like Silk Performer, SoapUI Pro and BlazeMeter.
8. QF-Test is an open-source automated black-box test tool that supports Windows, Linux, macOS, and Solaris OS. In addition, it has selenium support and scripting capabilities with JavaScript for automated black-box testings on multiple platforms.
9. Squish – commercial cross-platform GUI functional testing tool supporting Windows, Mac OS X and Linux. That lets you record tests using your browser or custom applications (graphical user interface objects can be added to the recorder).

Final thoughts

As you can see, there are plenty of automated black-box testings tools to choose from. The only difficulty is deciding which one suits your needs the best.

It’s important to remember that automated black-box testings solutions don’t provide 100% accuracy. That’s why it’s a good idea to combine both white and black box techniques in test automation.

The post Everything you need to know about Black box testing in 2022 appeared first on hikeqa.